Russia restricts retail crypto to bitcoin, ether, USDT
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- Russia's central bank will limit retail crypto trading to bitcoin, ether, and USDT on regulated exchanges beginning September 1, per draft rules.
- Non-qualified investors face a 300,000-ruble (~$3,600) annual purchase limit per intermediary, while qualified investors have no cap.
- The whitelist adds specifics to July legislation that opened regulated crypto trading from September 1 but did not name which retail assets would be allowed.
- Crypto payments inside Russia remain prohibited under current law even as trading on regulated venues gets a green light.
- The 300,000-ruble ceiling is set per intermediary rather than across an investor's total purchases, leaving the door open to larger aggregate exposure through multiple brokers or exchanges.
Why it matters: Russian retail traders get a three-coin menu and roughly $3,600 a year per broker before the cap bites, while qualified investors face no purchase limit — a two-tier system that channels retail flow toward BTC, ETH, and USDT specifically. The per-intermediary structure of the cap is the loophole regulators will almost certainly need to revisit if large-volume retail trading is to be genuinely constrained.
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