Russia opens regulated bitcoin trading: retail rules start 17 November, sanctioned Moscow Exchange lists BTC, ETH and USDT on 1 December

Russian retail investors will be allowed to buy bitcoin, ether and Tether’s USDT through licensed intermediaries from 17 November, up to 300,000 rubles a year per intermediary, the Bank of Russia said on Friday 6 November. The central bank’s press release sums up the directive behind Russia’s new bitcoin rules for retail clients: which coins non-qualified investors may hold and how much they may spend. Interfax reported at 16:01 Moscow time (13:01 UTC) that the Justice Ministry had registered the text, the step that lets it take effect.

The rules land three weeks before Moscow Exchange (MOEX) plans to open trading in the same three coins. Reuters, in a report carried by The Moscow Times on 2 November, said the exchange would start on 1 December. MOEX has been under US sanctions since June 2024 and under an EU asset freeze since July 2026, so the new Russian bitcoin market is a domestic, ruble-only affair that Western platforms cannot reach.

Markets showed no sign of reacting to the Russian news. Bitcoin traded near $75,600 around 14:13 UTC, down 4.7% over 24 hours, and ether near $2,230, down 6.2%, according to Coindaro’s market data. The whole crypto market lost about 7% in a day, and no source ties the drop to Moscow.

Russia’s bitcoin rules: three coins and a 300,000-ruble yearly cap

Non-qualified investors, the Russian term for ordinary retail clients, get a short list: Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether USDT. The Bank of Russia says it picked them because they are the most liquid. Every purchase goes through an intermediary, and the 300,000-ruble ceiling applies per intermediary and per year. Cointelegraph put that amount at about $3,700.

Qualified investors face no amount limit. But the central bank kept one rule for everybody, whatever their status: before a first transaction, an investor must pass a test and read a description of the risks.

From 17 November, according to the release, exchanges may admit these assets to public circulation. Klerk.ru, a Russian accounting news site, reported the same parameters and listed the channels: brokers, asset managers and crypto exchangers, on an exchange or over the counter.

Two details are still missing. The release does not give the directive’s formal number or the date it was signed, and Interfax’s report does not give the registration date either. The text the central bank published is a summary, not the directive itself.

The Bank of Russia had put a draft out for comment on 11 August, with comments open until 24 August. The final release keeps the selection criteria of that draft: market capitalisation, average daily trading volume and at least five years of price history on foreign platforms. Back in June, first deputy governor Vladimir Chistyukhin told RBC that the list would start with BTC, ETH and USDT and that the regulator did not plan to raise the 300,000-ruble limit, ForkLog reported. His argument: the amount is already above the average balance of a brokerage or trust account, and the cap limits what a client can lose.

Who can trade, and how the test works

Retail clients get three coins and the cap; qualified investors may buy any crypto asset traded on an exchange or over the counter, with no limit on the amount.

The cap counts per intermediary, not per person across the whole market. The central bank has not said publicly whether it will monitor clients who open accounts with several brokers.

The test itself has not been published. Mail.ru Finance reported on 2 November that a standard had been drawn up and sent to the Bank of Russia’s committee on basic standards. According to NAUFOR, the brokers’ association, brokers will run the tests first and a pass will be recognised on every regulated platform. Qualified investors take a harder version focused on high-risk assets, the same report said, which matches the central bank’s statement on Friday that the test applies to everybody.

Ownership looks different from what crypto users abroad are used to. According to the same Mail.ru Finance report, coins are held in depository accounts. The law does not ban withdrawals from a depository to a regulated foreign exchange, but it does not provide for withdrawals to a personal wallet, nor for transfers between two individuals’ depository accounts. In practice a Russian retail buyer gets an exposure held by an intermediary, a model close to the one described in our guide to how centralized exchanges handle custody and KYC.

Moscow Exchange plans bitcoin, ether and USDT trading from 1 December

MOEX will run its crypto sessions from 06:50 to 23:50 Moscow time, the same hours as its stock market, according to the Reuters report published by The Moscow Times. Trading will use the stock market’s technology, with unified clearing at the National Clearing Centre (NCC), the exchange’s clearing house.

Settlement will be same-day or next-day (TOD and TOM in exchange jargon), plus swaps. The first stage consists of pilot deals, with participants joining gradually. MOEX will not seek a crypto depository licence and will settle through a partner digital depository. The list of coins is meant to grow later, with both international and Russian instruments, the report said.

“We start with three key coins,” Boris Blokhin, MOEX senior managing director for sales and business development, said at the Smart-Lab conference on 31 October, as quoted in Russian by the business paper dp.ru. He added that the exchange plans order-book trading and swaps, and that its existing licence as a trading organiser is enough. No source we read mentions futures for the 1 December start.

There is no MOEX press release on the launch date that we could retrieve; the 1 December start rests on the Reuters report and on Cointelegraph, which reported the same hours and the 300,000-ruble retail cap per broker on 3 November.

The law behind it, from the August signature to licensed exchangers

The directive applies a federal law. Vladimir Putin signed the law “On Digital Currency and Digital Rights” on 4 August 2026, Interfax reported that day. It entered into force on 1 September, except for provisions with their own dates. The biggest of those: from 1 July 2027, crypto may be traded only through licensed intermediaries.

The law keeps the ban on paying for goods and services with crypto inside Russia, with exceptions such as foreign-trade settlements with non-residents, blockchain and earns a reward, which makes rewriting history very expensive.">mining rewards and network fees. A crypto exchanger must be a Russian company with at least 15 million rubles of its own funds. For public trading on an exchange, a coin needs an average market capitalisation above 5 trillion rubles and average daily volume above 1 trillion rubles over two years; the central bank’s board may admit others for up to six months, Interfax reported in August.

The machinery has started to fill up. Rules for crypto service providers took effect on 5 October, and 23 exchangers and eight depositories were registered within four weeks, Mail.ru Finance reported on 2 November; NAUFOR became the first self-regulatory organisation on 29 October, and crypto service firms have 90 days to join one. Our earlier count of 17 licensed exchangers and the retail plans of Sberbank and VTB dates from 23 October, before the latest registrations.

Russian tax residents must also report crypto held on foreign exchanges and in non-custodial wallets to the Federal Tax Service, according to the same report.

Foreign exchanges are on their way out. Mail.ru Finance listed Bitget, MEXC and KuCoin among platforms that announced exits from Russia in late October. Bitget gave Russian and Belarusian users until 21 October to close positions, and KuCoin ended its services in both countries with immediate effect. Under the new law, a foreign exchange could come back by registering a Russian subsidiary that meets the same requirements, Mail.ru Finance noted.

Sanctions keep the Moscow bitcoin market closed to Western platforms

The US moved first. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Moscow Exchange, the National Clearing Centre and the National Settlement Depository on 12 June 2024 under Executive Order 14024, with general licences for winding down existing deals, according to OFAC’s published guidance and an Interfax report of 13 June 2024. The UK sanctioned the exchange the same month, Cointelegraph noted.

The EU followed this year. Its 21st sanctions package, adopted on 23 July 2026, added 218 designations, among them 94 banks and financial institutions “including the Moscow Exchange”, subject to an asset freeze, the law firm Cooley wrote on 4 August. An asset freeze means EU operators may not make funds available to the listed entity.

Crypto had already been hit three months earlier. The 20th package, adopted on 23 April, banned transactions with any crypto-asset service provider established in Russia or Belarus, from 24 May 2026, according to blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs. The 21st package then extended the transaction ban to 14 crypto platforms in Georgia, Panama, the UAE, the Marshall Islands, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus, by Cooley’s count, and barred Russian nationals and residents from owning or sitting on the board of an EU crypto-asset business from 25 August. It also created a legal basis to cut off crypto providers in any third country the Council finds is undermining the sanctions; no country has been named yet.

So the two markets stay apart. Russian brokers can buy bitcoin on MOEX from 1 December, but an EU exchange, fund or broker cannot route an order there, settle with the NCC or open an account with a Russia-based provider without breaching sanctions.

What changes for readers in Europe, the UK and the US

For a buyer in Paris, Milan, London or New York, nothing new opens. The Russian rules apply to Russian intermediaries and their clients, and Western sanctions bar Western firms from the exchange that will host the trading.

For crypto firms in Europe, the work is compliance. The ban on Russian providers applies to EU persons, and TRM Labs says it “places a premium on counterparty diligence”: a firm has to know whether the platform on the other side is established in Russia or Belarus. The ownership and board ban adds a check on who stands behind the firm itself. These obligations sit on top of the licensing regime explained in our guide to the MiCA regulation. We found no statement on the Russian rules from France’s AMF, Italy’s Consob or OAM, or the UK’s FCA.

One open question matters beyond Russia: the price. Market participants fear that Western labelling of Russian crypto could push Moscow prices to a discount to foreign venues, according to the Reuters report. Sergey Mendeleev, founder of the Russian cross-border payments platform Exved, told Cointelegraph he doubts there will be much demand on a sanctioned exchange and warned of “absolutely outrageous spreads” for retail clients. He sees more use for importers and exporters trading crypto directly. Neither view is a measurement yet: the first MOEX trades will show whether a gap appears.

Key dates and figures of Russia’s retail crypto rules

Open questions before 17 November and 1 December

Several points that will decide whether the market works are not public. No source lists the brokers that will connect to MOEX on 1 December, and nobody has given a forecast of volumes. Whether Sberbank and VTB, the two banks that announced retail crypto plans, will be ready for the first session is not known.

The test questions have not been published, nor the directive’s number and registration date. The list of coins may grow: the law lets the central bank’s board admit other assets for up to six months, and MOEX says it wants to add instruments later.

The next step is fixed. On 17 November the directive takes effect and Russian exchanges may list the three coins for public trading; on 1 December, if the Reuters report holds, Moscow Exchange runs its first pilot deals.