Advertising crypto services in Russia: a strange transition period and new rules of the game
Starting September 1, 2026, advertising of services for organizing cryptocurrency circulation will be permitted in Russia for the first time in two years. However, the ban on advertising digital currencies themselves remains in effect. This creates a unique and, at first glance, paradoxical situation in the market, which I will analyze in this analytical review.
Until recently, the answer to the question about advertising cryptocurrencies and related services was extremely simple: it is prohibited. Since August 19, 2024, Federal Law No. 221-FZ introduced a broad ban on advertising digital currency itself, as well as goods, works, and services related to organizing its circulation. This ban also extended to offering digital currency to an unlimited circle of people.
In practice, this meant that one could not write "Buy USDT at a favorable rate," "Exchange Bitcoin in 15 minutes," or advertise a crypto exchange as a place for exchanging. The wording turned out to be so broad that the effect quickly extended far beyond the exchanges themselves. The example of mining is telling: in August 2024, the state effectively legalized this activity, created a separate regulated regime for miners, but Yandex.Direct at the same time updated its rules and banned advertising of mining, crypto exchanges, blockchain, smart contracts, and ICOs. The result was a strange effect: the state had just legalized mining, while the largest advertising platform almost simultaneously banned advertising it.
Today, Yandex's rules still allow advertising of mining equipment and cloud resources, educational materials, and events, but crypto exchanges themselves and mining as an activity remain in prohibited categories. At the same time, the market has not been too upset by the ban over these two years. This is especially evident in the example of Moscow City: even now, in public listings of exchanges, users are directly offered to buy and sell USDT, BTC, ETH, compare rates, and choose a specific service. Market participants continued to operate as if there were no advertising bans.
From a legal standpoint, the 2024 ban was quite logical: at that time, Russia completely lacked regulation of organizing cryptocurrency circulation. The state effectively prohibited advertising this until a legal regime emerged. Now such a regime has appeared. Federal Law No. 282-FZ dated 04.08.2026 "On Digital Currencies and Digital Rights" and Federal Law No. 283-FZ dated 04.08.2026 have been adopted. The first creates the regulated organization of cryptocurrency circulation itself and defines its legal participants. The second restructures a large number of related laws, including the Advertising Law. Both laws were officially published on August 4, 2026.
Starting September 1, 2026, the ban on advertising digital currency itself remains in effect. Advertising Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, or any other specific digital currency is still prohibited. One cannot make BTC the "asset of the week," offer to "buy USDT today," or promise growth of a specific coin. However, advertising services for organizing the circulation of digital currencies is now permitted. Unlike in 2024, the state has created a regulated framework: rules for organizing circulation are defined, conditions for obtaining the statuses of legal crypto exchanges, digital depositories, and other participants are established. Banning these participants from informing the market about their services would, in my opinion, look strange. A separate permitted model for this is created by new Article 29.2 of the Advertising Law.
There is an interesting point here. The new advertising conditions begin to apply already on September 1, 2026, and extend only to cryptocurrency circulation participants from the Central Bank's registry. At the same time, the full regime, under which only registry participants are entitled to organize circulation, is activated only on July 1, 2027. Exchanges can operate under the old rules until that date, but the new advertising conditions do not apply to such players—they are not in the registry, which the Central Bank itself has not yet opened.
Thus, starting September 1, the market enters an unusual transitional period. New advertising rules already exist, but the new access infrastructure is only being launched. As of August, the Bank of Russia has published drafts of the procedure for maintaining registries and other necessary acts. This is not a complete legal vacuum—the law specifically provided for transitional mechanisms—but a certain regulatory desynchronization is obvious here.
My expert commentary: The market is entering a phase of "semi-legal" marketing, where formal permission for advertising will appear earlier than the real opportunity to follow it. Participants not included in the Central Bank's registry will have to act carefully to avoid provoking claims. At the same time, for legal players, this is a window of opportunity: those who first obtain status will be able to occupy dominant positions in the advertising space before the full launch of regulation in 2027.