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Transferring $200 abroad costs on average 6.4% of the amount, while a bank transfer eats up almost 15% — and this is despite the fact that the payment message itself reaches the recipient bank in ten minutes. These figures, which I have repeatedly cited in my reviews, clearly demonstrate: the main time and money are spent not on transmission, but on post-processing. Over the course of one month, five different methods were used to try to close this gap.

The key event occurred on August 4, when the President of Russia signed the law "On Digital Currency and Digital Rights." Notably, three weeks earlier, the United States legislatively banned its own digital dollar, Europe entered final negotiations on the digital euro, the Bank for International Settlements conducted settlements with real money in the Agorá project, and Mastercard closed the deal to acquire a company specializing in stablecoin settlements. All five events answer one question, but the Russian answer is unique: here, the state is building two payment circuits at once and regulating them differently.

The dispute is not about technology

The bottleneck is not message transmission. According to SWIFT statistics, three out of four payments reach the recipient bank in ten minutes. The real problem is the "last mile": compliance checks, reconciliation, and crediting at the local bank. The essence of the dispute lies in the question of whose obligation you hold at the moment of settlement: the central bank's, a commercial bank's, or a private issuer company's. This determines who to file claims with if a payment is lost and who benefits from the funds while they sit in the system.

This balance is the raw material of the banking economy. It is what they earn on, what they issue loans from, and what they keep clients for. Almost every decision of the past year has been designed to keep the balance from leaving the banking system. As Mikhail Kulakov, leading engineer-analyst of the "Blockchain" direction at DiSoft, rightly notes, the question "whose obligation is this" is a question of where the primary record is kept and who has the right to change it. The central bank's obligation lives on the regulator's platform, the bank's obligation lives in its accounting core, and the token issuer's obligation lives in a foreign network to which the bank has only read access.

What the Russian law introduces

The law takes effect on September 1, 2026. Mandatory registration of crypto exchangers in the Bank of Russia registry will begin on July 1, 2027, and part of the requirements for intermediaries — from September 2027. A new category of professional participants emerges — digital depositories: they maintain records of clients' crypto assets, keep primary and backup IT infrastructure in Russia, and compensate for damages in case of unauthorized debits. Crypto exchangers with own funds of at least 15 million rubles are legalized.

The criteria for admitting assets to trading are enshrined in the law itself: capitalization above 5 trillion rubles, average daily turnover exceeding 1 trillion, and a trading history of at least five years — all averaged over two years. Bitcoin and ether currently meet these criteria. For non-qualified investors, a limit of 300 thousand rubles per year at one intermediary and mandatory testing are established.

The provision that will affect practice earlier than others is settlements under foreign trade contracts. It has been in effect since September 2024 in the Bank of Russia's experimental mode, and the new law makes it permanent. At the same time, domestic payments in cryptocurrency remain prohibited. Not only custodial wallets are allowed, but also self-custody ones; when withdrawing over 100 thousand rubles to an external address, a 48-hour delay is provided — it will take effect on September 1, 2027.

It is important to emphasize: the list itself does not prohibit the Central Bank from owning assets outside it. The criteria apply to public offerings through Russian intermediaries, not to property rights. Digital currency is recognized as property with judicial protection. Foreign and non-custodial wallets are not prohibited — the owner is recognized as the one who holds the access key. The obligation to declare the very fact of ownership is not directly established — except for civil servants. Two or more transactions per month exceeding 3.5 million rubles are considered by the law as a sign of organized activity requiring intermediary status.

Tax arises upon sale, not upon holding: 13% on income up to 2.4 million rubles and 15% above that, with a 3-NDFL declaration due by April 30. The holding-period exemption that applies to certain types of property does not apply to digital currency. From July 1, 2027, banks are obliged to refuse transfers to unlicensed crypto services — the channel for funding foreign platforms through a Russian bank is closed.

Two circuits instead of one

Domestically, from September 1, mandatory acceptance of the digital ruble begins — the state retail currency that the United States legislatively rejected until the end of 2030 and that Europe is only designing so far. Externally, the circulation of private global assets is legalized. Both instruments are used simultaneously but separated by purpose: domestically — only the public circuit, externally — only the private one.

The logic of the separation is simple if you look at obligations. Domestically, the balance remains with the Bank of Russia: this provides traceability of settlements and independence from external infrastructure — but at the same time raises that very question of privacy, which is why the retail model was rejected in the United States. Externally, an asset is used that is not issued by any of the transaction participants — which is why it works where correspondent channels have become difficult to navigate due to external restrictions of recent years. The sanctions context is not named in the law, but it is the most obvious explanation for the foreign trade provision.

The combination of public and private circuits in itself is not unique — China, the UAE, and India do the same. The peculiarity of the Russian model lies in the rigid segmentation by payment purpose, and it is shaped by external circumstances no less than by design. As Kulakov adds, the divergence of trajectories is explained not only by regulatory but also by architectural choices: retail central bank projects in BRICS are built on centralized platforms where the distributed ledger is used selectively, while stablecoins live in the opposite paradigm — public networks, an open record book, and no single operator. Therefore, the two circuits are not two interfaces but two different data models.

The world, the market, and the practical conclusion

The American construct took shape over a year. The GENIUS Act (July 2025) requires full backing of stablecoins with liquid assets and directly prohibits accruing income to holders for the token. And on July 11, 2026, the ban on a retail central bank digital currency became law: until the end of 2030, the Fed is not authorized to issue a CBDC. Europe chose the opposite instrument: according to ECB data, in 2022 international card schemes accounted for 61% of eurozone card payments, and thirteen countries depend on them entirely. The digital euro is being designed as a public alternative with zero yield and a holding limit — the regulation has not been adopted, a pilot is planned for the second half of 2027, and the first issuance for 2029.

Mastercard closed the purchase of BVNK on August 3; the price announced in March was up to $1.8 billion, including about $300 million in contingent payments. The asset's value is largely regulatory: BVNK received a MiCA license in Malta in February 2026, valid across the entire EU. In July, Visa launched a stablecoin issuance platform for banks. Card networks are embedding new instruments into the settlement layer while retaining the client and the rules: they do not need the balance — they earn on the flow. The share of stablecoins in cross-border retail payments in 2025 was 0.31%.

The only one to report settlements with real money is the Bank for International Settlements project. On July 30, results were published: about thirty participants, including five central banks, 30 transactions in six currencies totaling around one million dollars, with an average settlement time of 80 seconds versus several business days in correspondent practice. The platform operated autonomously, without connection to existing systems and without real compliance procedures. As Kulakov explains, the engineering value of Agorá is that there is no need to move accounting anywhere: the tokenized deposit remains the obligation of the same bank, and the ledger takes on atomicity and synchronization. But compliance checks, sanctions screening, and the resolution of disputed transactions remained outside the scope — and these are precisely what constitute the "last mile."

Country trajectories are diverging. Of the eleven BRICS countries, all are studying digital currencies, nine have reached the pilot stage, but none has fully launched a system. Since January 1, 2026, China has reclassified the digital yuan in commercial bank accounts as a deposit obligation — interest accrues on it and deposit insurance applies, meaning Beijing decided to return the balance to banks through yield. India is moving in the opposite direction: the volume of the digital rupee in circulation declined for the first time by 24% in the 2025/26 fiscal year, and Brazil in November 2025 shut down the Drex platform, admitting that the technology did not ensure privacy and security.

The digital ruble looks modest — as of July 1, over 25 million digital rubles were in circulation, about $320 thousand for the entire country — but in two months, acceptance becomes mandatory for companies with revenue exceeding 120 million rubles. For foreign trade participants, the law removes some legal uncertainty within the Russian circuit, but it does not regulate the external side of the transaction: the readiness of a foreign counterparty to accept payment is determined by its own compliance and assessment of sanctions risk. Bitcoin and ether, admitted to trading, are volatile, and this is an independent risk for a contract with deferred payment.

My conclusion: mandatory acceptance of the digital ruble creates a forced flow from bank balances into a central bank obligation — exactly what everyone else is avoiding. The question of the next year and a half is not whether the circuits of different countries will align, but whether Russia will repeat the Chinese maneuver — accrue income or otherwise return the balance to banks. The answer will be visible in the dynamics of the deposit base by the end of 2027.