Russia’s State Duma has passed a major digital currency bill in its first reading, moving the country closer to one of its most sweeping overhauls of crypto regulation in years.
The legislation, introduced by the Russian government, aims to pull the digital asset market out of the legal gray zone it has occupied for years, and explicitly authorizes the use of cryptocurrency in cross-border trade, a provision widely seen as Moscow’s attempt to build a legal route around Western sanctions.
The bill still has two more readings to clear before it becomes law, but passage through the first hurdle signals serious legislative momentum. If fully adopted, the core framework is set to take effect July 1, 2026.
What the bill actually does
At its core, the legislation does several things at once. It formally classifies digital currency as property under Russian law, a designation that carries real practical consequences.
As Kaplan Panesh, deputy chairman of the State Duma’s Committee on Budget and Taxes, explained after the vote, treating crypto as property means it can be defended in court, included in bankruptcy proceedings and factored into divorce settlements. “This is a crucial step for the legal protection of millions of people who already own such assets,” he said.
The bill simultaneously draws a hard line on domestic payments. Cryptocurrency cannot be used to buy goods, pay for services or settle wages inside Russia. The ruble stays as the country’s only legal tender for domestic transactions. That part is non-negotiable, according to Panesh, but the foreign trade carve-out is where things get geopolitically interesting.
Companies will be permitted to use digital assets when settling accounts with foreign counterparties, which Panesh described openly as a mechanism for bypassing sanctions. “This allows Russian companies to use cryptocurrency to pay foreign counterparties, circumventing sanctions restrictions,” he said. “We are essentially creating a legal instrument for cross-border payments.”
Russia has been exploring this approach since at least September 2024, when an experimental legal regime first permitted cryptocurrency use in cross-border trade settlements under Bank of Russia supervision. That earlier mechanism did not constitute full legalization, the new bill would codify and expand on it.
The framework also hands the Bank of Russia, Russia’s central bank, formal authority to authorize, regulate and supervise all organizations involved in digital currency and digital rights circulation. Only licensed entities will be permitted to operate: exchanges, brokers, trustees and digital depositories, all holding Bank of Russia licenses.
No anonymous exchangers, no unregistered platforms. Accompanying legislation proposes criminal penalties of up to 7 years in prison for operating unlicensed crypto services, though Russia’s Supreme Court has already signaled that it views the criminalization timeline as premature given that the core regulatory framework hasn’t taken effect yet.
Tiered investors, whitelisted assets
One of the bill’s more significant structural choices is the introduction of a two-tier investor system, separating qualified and non-qualified participants with different levels of access and protection.
Ordinary investors, those without professional financial credentials, will face annual investment limits of 300,000 rubles and will only be permitted to trade higher market cap assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, based on a whitelist maintained by the central bank.
They’ll also be required to pass a risk-awareness test before they can begin trading. The idea, according to Panesh, is to shield everyday Russians from the full force of a volatile market without cutting them out entirely.
Qualified investors, a category based on income, assets or financial credentials, face no volume caps, though they too must pass a knowledge assessment. Privacy-focused cryptocurrencies that conceal transaction data would remain prohibited across both tiers.
For banks and existing financial market participants, the bill proposes a simplified licensing path. Rather than going through a full new authorization process, brokers and banks already operating under Bank of Russia oversight could obtain crypto exchange rights through an expedited notification-based procedure.
The central bank updated its qualified investor criteria last year, with individuals now qualifying based on factors including a master’s degree in finance, annual income of at least 20 million rubles (roughly $266k), or meeting specified property ownership thresholds.
Mining gets a legal framework too. The activity is recognized as legitimate, but only when conducted using Russian information infrastructure, and with formal accounting requirements for both equipment and produced currency.
Since January 2025, mining has been banned in around a dozen Russian regions due to energy shortfalls, the bill layers legal clarity on top of a patchwork of regional restrictions that has created confusion for operators.
Context: years in the making
Russia’s arrival at this point has been anything but direct. For much of the past decade, Moscow treated crypto with deep suspicion. The country never fully banned digital assets but kept them under strict legal limits that discouraged participation by mainstream financial institutions.
Western sanctions imposed following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine dramatically changed the calculus, cutting Russian banks off from large chunks of the international financial system and pushing officials to view blockchain infrastructure as a potential lifeline for trade with willing partners.
The experimental cross-border regime launched in 2024 was Moscow’s first real acknowledgment that crypto could serve a strategic economic purpose. The new bill extends that logic into a formal, permanent structure.
A separate stablecoin bill is also advancing on a parallel legislative track, with the Ministry of Finance pushing for rules covering fiat-pegged digital assets as a distinct category.
The Central Bank has already classified stablecoins as “foreign digital rights” and approved a ruble-pegged token called A7A5 for overseas trade settlements, another sign that Moscow is building out a broader digital payment infrastructure designed, at least in part, to work around the dollar-denominated banking system.