Crypto news

RAKIB Executive Director Alexander Brazhnikov assessed the Central Bank's proposal to allow Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT for exchange trading. In his opinion, this creates long-awaited legal infrastructure, but the annual limit of 300,000 rubles for non-qualified investors turns retail access into a formality. A full-fledged market is formed exclusively for qualified participants—without restrictions on amounts or the list of assets.

For the average investor, a fully legal way to enter cryptocurrency through domestic intermediaries appears for the first time. However, the threshold of 300,000 rubles per year per intermediary significantly narrows the scale: most active users accustomed to turnovers several times higher will likely continue operating through foreign platforms and P2P. Thus, the regulator is not so much opening the market as creating its appearance for the mass segment.

What the Central Bank's proposal changes

Today, cryptocurrency trading in Russia relies on P2P platforms, foreign exchanges, and exchangers. This gray sector carries a whole host of risks: bank card blocks, fraud, lack of consumer protection, and periodic freezes of Russians' accounts at the request of international regulators. For a qualified investor, the picture is different—there are no restrictions on amounts or the list of assets, which opens the door to a full-fledged market for professionals.

Such a configuration could serve as a signal for wealthy investors and spur an influx of institutional capital. Transparent rules reduce uncertainty for those who previously avoided cryptocurrencies due to risks of blocks and unclear asset status. At the same time, the "gray" sector does not yet receive a decisive incentive to come out of the shadows—for organizations with multi-million turnovers, existing restrictions are unlikely to prove more attractive than familiar schemes.

Impact on the economy

The first effect relates to legalization and growth in tax revenues. A significant portion of Russians' crypto transactions today passes through P2P, foreign exchanges, and exchangers, and taxes on them, if paid at all, are only partially paid. The Central Bank's project creates a legal structure with supervised intermediaries. Given market volumes, even a moderate share of transactions could bring billions of rubles in taxes to the treasury annually, and licensed brokers, exchangers, and management companies will pay income tax, VAT, and insurance premiums. Miners who currently move to P2P will be able to officially sell cryptocurrency through regulated intermediaries.

The second effect is a tool for cross-border settlements. The Central Bank has already confirmed its readiness to allow a limited circle of companies to use digital currencies in foreign trade operations, and the admission of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT to public circulation creates a legal basis for this. Such a tool does not depend on SWIFT, correspondent accounts in dollars and euros, or freezes by Western regulators, which reduces costs and risks in foreign trade. Direct settlements in cryptocurrency eliminate multi-stage schemes with foreign currency and offshore structures.

The third effect is the investment climate. Transparent rules attract wealthy investors, money that went abroad may remain in the Russian financial system, and an industry forms around the market—custodial services, crypto brokers, analytical platforms, management companies—creating jobs and a tax base.

Key risks

Brazhnikov calls sanctions and geopolitical pressure the first risk. Creating a cryptocurrency market in Russia will almost certainly attract the attention of Western regulators, and he considers the risk of secondary sanctions for Russian brokers, exchangers, and their clients quite real. He separately highlights the use of USDT: the stablecoin issuer may freeze addresses linked to Russian companies at the request of foreign authorities. This creates a false sense of reliability for a tool that could be blocked at a critical moment.

The second risk is concentration among intermediaries. Admitting a limited number of licensed brokers and exchangers creates points of risk concentration: if such an intermediary is hacked, goes bankrupt, or commits fraud, the damage will be very large, and insurance mechanisms for crypto assets are currently absent.

The third risk is linked to the growth of fraud under the guise of legitimate actions. The official status of cryptocurrencies could be used by malicious actors: pseudo-brokers will appear posing as licensed organizations, along with schemes promising guaranteed returns, and citizens who believe in state approval will become more vulnerable.

The fourth risk is monopolization. Large participants who first obtain licenses may lobby for stricter requirements for newcomers, leading to high fees, lower service quality, and in the long term, slowing industry development.

How this looks against global practice

According to Brazhnikov's assessment, Russia is building its own model, and the 300,000 rubles per year limit for non-qualified investors is its most distinctive part. In the US, EU, Brazil, South Korea, and Japan, there are no fixed limits on purchasing cryptocurrencies for citizens: protection is built through mandatory risk disclosure and regulator warnings, not through restricting amounts.

The second difference is the narrow list of assets. The requirement of a five-year price history and a list of only three assets place Russia among the most conservative countries. Even Japan, the only major economy with a "whitelist," admits dozens of assets under more flexible criteria, whereas the Russian approach, the expert says, is a deliberate rejection of almost the entire altcoin market.

The third is the division into qualified and non-qualified investors. Brazhnikov considers this a transfer of the traditional Russian model of securities market regulation to cryptocurrencies: such a division is atypical for crypto exchanges, where a retail investor can usually buy any available cryptocurrency.

As a result, an "elite" legal market is created for large capital and a limited one for everyone else. In this form, according to Brazhnikov, it is more of an experiment dictated by the Central Bank's current policy.

The expert separately highlights the sanctions factor. Most of the mentioned countries are integrated into the global financial system, whereas for Russia, many Western exchanges have closed or restricted access, so the domestic regulated market is initially built as isolated—relying on internal liquidity and a limited circle of friendly counterparties.

My view: the Central Bank's proposal is not so much liberalization as a targeted adjustment of the market to the interests of institutional players. The 300,000 rubles limit is not protection for the retail investor but a filter that leaves the mass segment in the gray zone. Until the regulator revises this threshold, talking about real legalization of cryptocurrencies in Russia is premature. The market will remain two-tiered: transparent for the chosen few and shadowy for everyone else.