Crypto news

Alexander Brazhnikov, Executive Director of RAKIB, presented a mixed assessment of the Central Bank's initiative to allow Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT to be traded on exchanges. On the one hand, this is a long-awaited step toward creating legal infrastructure; on the other, the proposed limit of 300,000 rubles per year for non-qualified investors turns retail access into a formality rather than a real financial tool. In essence, we are witnessing the formation of a full-fledged market exclusively for qualified participants, with no restrictions on amounts or the list of assets.

What the Central Bank's proposal changes

Today, cryptocurrency trading in Russia is concentrated on P2P platforms, foreign exchanges, and exchange offices. This involves a whole set of risks: card blocking by banks, fraud, lack of consumer protection, and periodic account freezes for Russians at the request of international regulators. For the first time, a non-qualified investor has a fully legal way to invest through domestic intermediaries. However, the bar of 300,000 rubles per year at each intermediary significantly limits the scale: most active users, accustomed to turnovers several times higher, will likely continue to work through foreign platforms and P2P.

For a qualified investor, the picture is different. The absence of restrictions on amounts and assets opens the door to a full-fledged market for professionals. This 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 freezes and the unclear status of the asset.

Meanwhile, 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.

Nevertheless, the very fact of legal infrastructure emerging, according to the expert, can reduce the uncontrolled zone of the market. Even a moderate shift of operations into the legal framework changes the proportions.

Impact on the economy

Brazhnikov associates the first effect with legalization and growth in tax revenues. A significant portion of Russians' cryptocurrency operations today passes through P2P, foreign exchanges, and exchange offices, and taxes on them, if paid at all, are only partial. 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, while licensed brokers, exchange offices, and management companies will pay profit tax, VAT, and insurance premiums. Miners, who now retreat 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-step 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

Alexander Brazhnikov names sanctions and geopolitical pressure as the first risk. Creating a cryptocurrency market in Russia will almost certainly attract the attention of Western regulators, and the expert considers the risk of secondary sanctions for Russian brokers, exchange offices, and their clients quite real. He separately highlights the use of USDT: the stablecoin issuer could freeze addresses linked to Russian companies at the request of foreign authorities. This, according to the expert, 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 exchange offices creates points of risk concentration: if such an intermediary is hacked, goes bankrupt, or commits fraud, the damage would be very large, and insurance mechanisms for crypto assets are currently absent. The expert links the third risk to the growth of fraud under the guise of legitimate actions. Malicious actors could exploit the official status of cryptocurrencies: pseudo-brokers will appear posing as licensed organizations, along with schemes promising guaranteed returns, and citizens who believe in government approval will become more vulnerable.

The fourth risk is monopolization. Large players who first obtain licenses may lobby to tighten requirements for newcomers, leading to high fees, lower service quality, and, in the long term, hindering 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 amount restrictions.

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 "white list," admits dozens of assets under more flexible criteria, while the expert calls the Russian approach 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 retail investors 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 conclusion: The Central Bank's initiative is an important but extremely cautious step. The 300,000 rubles limit effectively excludes the mass retail investor from the legal field, keeping them in the gray zone. Until the regulator revises this threshold or proposes alternative protection mechanisms, the Russian crypto market will remain a niche tool for the select few rather than an economic driver. However, the very fact of recognizing cryptocurrency at the official level is already a signal the market has waited for years.