The financial group "Finam" has announced a strategic decision to enter the Russian cryptocurrency market as a full-fledged participant. The company intends to combine the functions of a broker and a crypto exchange, which will be an important step in the institutionalization of digital assets in the country.
During the Eastern Economic Forum, the group's president and chairman of the management board, Vladislav Kochetkov, outlined the key contours of the new strategy. According to him, the company has already finalized the roles that "Finam" will perform in this direction. The strategy is divided into two blocks: decisions that have already been finalized and those that are still in the development stage.
Depository postponed: the price of the issue is billions
One of the most sensitive issues was the creation of its own digital depository. Kochetkov stated directly that this project is currently frozen, and the reason is purely economic in nature. Launching such infrastructure requires substantial investment—by various estimates, at least 3 billion rubles—and the payback period could stretch to eight years.
For such a capital-intensive and long-term project, the group's head explained, a high degree of confidence in the future market volume is necessary. However, at the initial stage of regulation in Russia, such certainty is objectively lacking. That is why the launch of the depository has been postponed until the demand picture becomes clearer.
The market will be speculative but liquid
Equally notable is Kochetkov's assessment of the nature of the future Russian crypto market. He is convinced that it will be predominantly speculative. Buying digital assets for settlements or storage on personal non-custodial wallets is a scenario he considers less characteristic of the domestic model.
In his opinion, Russia is deliberately forging its own path, diverging from the classical ideology of cryptocurrencies as a tool for the free movement of assets without intermediaries. This is a conscious choice of the Russian development model.
At the same time, the regulated market will be full-fledged, liquid, and functional. Kochetkov emphasized that it will be built on a rigid architecture atypical for the crypto industry. In his view, it is precisely this that will ensure transparency, investor protection, and predictability of rules—three key qualities necessary for participant trust.
The speculative nature means that most transactions will be aimed at earning from exchange rate fluctuations rather than using cryptocurrency in everyday payments. This, in turn, makes the market more volatile but simultaneously more attractive to active traders.
My view: Finam's decision is a signal of the maturity of the Russian crypto market. However, the reliance on a speculative model carries a double risk: on the one hand, it ensures rapid growth in trading volumes; on the other, it makes the market vulnerable to sharp capital outflows when sentiment shifts. The sustainability of such a structure will directly depend on the quality of regulation and the ability to attract long-term institutional players.