Putin Signs Russia's First Crypto Law: Trading Is Legal, Payments Stay Banned
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- Putin signed Russia's first comprehensive digital currency law on Tuesday, per Tass, creating a unified framework for exchanges, custodians, brokers, and clearing houses — while keeping a ban on using crypto for goods and services payments and blocking ads pitching crypto payments.
- The law requires crypto exchanges to join a state registry by July 1, 2027, hold at least 15 million rubles (~$187,000) of own capital, and belong to a financial-market self-regulatory body; most provisions take effect September 1.
- Non-accredited investors may buy the most liquid cryptocurrencies through licensed intermediaries up to 300,000 rubles per year per intermediary, and both retail and qualified investors must pass a knowledge test — qualified investors face no purchase cap.
- Banks and foreign-lender branches must reject transfers suspected of routing through unregistered providers, while Russian crypto holders gain court protection regardless of whether they previously declared the assets.
- The law permits settlements under foreign trade contracts between residents and nonresidents, as well as deals involving mined coins and payments inside digital-asset platforms — carve-outs the source flags as the part Western regulators will scrutinize for sanctions-evasion potential.
- The framework dovetails with Russia's digital ruble push, with the central bank governor requiring banks to support the digital ruble by the same September 1 effective date — Russia already legalized crypto mining in a separate 2024 bill that this law fills out.
Why it matters: Russian crypto holders gain legal standing and licensed venues they previously lacked, while the central bank gets a supervised trading pipeline it can monitor. The foreign-trade carve-out is the load-bearing provision: the law explicitly permits cross-border crypto settlements between residents and nonresidents, and the source flags that as the part Western sanctions enforcers will watch.
