The Central Bank of Russia will tackle misselling in cryptocurrency sales: penalties for concealing risks are inevitable.
The Bank of Russia has announced the launch of a large-scale monitoring of misselling practices in the sale of digital assets. Financial organizations that offer cryptocurrencies to clients will now be required to disclose all associated risks with utmost clarity. Concealing or distorting information will become a direct reason for sanctions by the regulator.
The essence of the new requirements
From September 1, when digital currencies officially become available to retail investors through licensed intermediaries, the quality of buyer information will take center stage. The regulator intends to ensure that sellers do not substitute one product for another or conceal key transaction characteristics. Particular emphasis is placed on the requirement that financial organizations must disclose not only potential returns but also all possible losses.
At the initial stage, it is critically important to assess how conscientiously market participants approach explaining the risks associated with volatility and the uncertainty of the legal status of crypto assets. The filters already in place — mandatory testing of buyer knowledge and limits on transaction amounts depending on the risk level — remain in effect, but they do not address the quality of communication during direct sales. That is why the regulator is adding its own oversight of seller behavior to the formal barriers.
Context of the new regulation
The recently signed law for the first time comprehensively regulates the circulation of digital currencies and rights in Russia. The document establishes rules for exchangers, depositories, and brokers, as well as defines the conditions for purchasing cryptocurrencies for investors. The regulation covers the organization of circulation, accounting and storage of assets, mining, and the issuance of digital rights. The scope includes information system operators, exchange companies, managing and clearing organizations.
For unqualified buyers, the regulator has set a limit of 300,000 rubles per year per intermediary. However, distributing transactions across different licensed platforms remains a legal way to bypass this threshold, which raises questions among experts. The institutionalization of the market, rather than its legalization in the consumer sense — this is how industry specialists assess the new law. At the same time, the Central Bank's by-laws, including testing criteria and requirements for depositories, may have an even greater impact on the strictness of the rules than the text of the law itself.
Controversial provisions are already sparking discussions. For example, the right to provide digital currency as a loan will be granted only to crypto brokers, trust managers, exchangers, and clearing organizations. Miners and private holders of large portfolios have been excluded from this list, creating a legal conflict and potential risks for the market.
My view: Tightening oversight of misselling is a logical step to protect retail investors, but the effectiveness of this measure will directly depend on how transparently and impartially the regulator can assess real sales practices. If oversight remains formal and penalties are rare, unscrupulous players will quickly find loopholes. However, the very signal of the Central Bank's readiness to punish silence is a powerful precedent that is already changing the rules of the game in the Russian crypto market.