The Central Bank of Russia will tackle misselling in cryptocurrency sales: penalties are inevitable
The Bank of Russia has announced the launch of mandatory monitoring of misselling practices in the sale of digital currencies and related financial instruments. The regulator intends to strictly suppress situations where financial organizations sell one product under the guise of another or deliberately conceal key risks from the client. This statement came against the backdrop of the upcoming start of retail sales of crypto assets through licensed intermediaries, which will begin on September 1.
A new round of control
With the introduction of legal circulation of digital currencies for the general public, the regulator faces a new task — ensuring fair information for buyers. This is not only about formal barriers, such as knowledge testing and purchase limits, but also about the substantive part: what exactly and how sellers communicate to the client at the moment of the transaction. Central Bank Deputy Chairman Mikhail Mamuta emphasized that at the initial stage it is extremely important to assess how well this process is organized, and if violations are identified, penalties will follow.
The filters already built into the rules — mandatory knowledge verification through a testing system and limiting the volume of purchases depending on the level of risk — remain in force. However, as experts rightly note, they only remove part of the risks at the entry point and in no way guarantee that the client will not be "fed" distorted information during the direct sale. That is why the Central Bank is adding its own oversight of seller behavior to the formal mechanisms.
Regulatory context
The new measures fit logically into the overall regulatory picture launched after the president signed the law on comprehensive cryptocurrency regulation. The document establishes rules for exchangers, depositories, and market participants, and also defines the conditions for purchasing digital assets for investors. Let me remind you that for unqualified buyers, the Central Bank has set a limit of 300,000 rubles per year for purchasing assets through a single intermediary.
The industry is already voicing complaints about certain provisions, for example, the article on providing digital currency as a loan, where miners and private holders of large portfolios were excluded from the list of permitted participants. However, in my view, it is the control over misselling that will become the very tool that determines the real strictness of the new regulation. The law sets the framework, but the Central Bank's by-laws and their enforcement practice will show how ready the market is to work transparently with the retail investor.
My conclusion: the Central Bank's initiative is timely. Without combating misselling, the legalization of the crypto market risks turning into the legalization of abuse. The only question is how quickly the regulator can build an effective supervisory system that does not stifle the emerging industry with bureaucracy.