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The Bank of Russia has published the first draft of regulations to license crypto trading, custody, and settlement inside the country, less than two weeks before a broader digital assets framework is scheduled to take effect. The proposals introduce a tiered licensing regime for “digital depositories” with capital requirements ranging from 50 million rubles to 250 million rubles, depending on the services they provide and the assets they hold. The draft is open for public assessment and is the first concrete rulebook to emerge from the digital assets law adopted by the State Duma on July 21 and approved by the Federation Council on July 24.
How the new regime is structured
Under the draft, the Bank of Russia would extend several structures already used in Russia’s securities markets to digital assets, including exchange trading rules, custody requirements, record-keeping standards, and disclosure obligations. The centerpiece of the new framework is the digital depository, a regulated entity that would record holdings of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. Settlement depositories would need 250 million rubles, roughly $2.8 million at current rates, in capital. Firms that control crypto addresses or hold assets with foreign custodians would need 100 million rubles, about $1.1 million. Other digital depositories would be required to hold 50 million rubles, or roughly $570,000.
Assets counted toward those capital requirements must be liquid, and eligible financial assets must meet the central bank’s credit-quality standards. The same requirements would apply to operators of electronic platforms that settle transactions involving digital financial assets, the central bank said.
Registers, scope, and the road to September
The central bank will maintain three public registers: one for digital depositories, one for crypto exchange operators, and one for issuers of digital financial assets. The draft rules are open for public assessment, and the broader framework is scheduled to come into full force by September.
The Bank of Russia published the draft four days after the European Union unveiled its 21st sanctions package, which targeted 14 crypto firms including A7, a $120 billion stablecoin network. The sequencing underscores how rapidly the regulatory perimeter around Russian-linked digital assets has tightened from two directions at once: domestically, with a licensing regime that institutionalizes crypto trading, and externally, with sanctions that complicate the cross-border plumbing of those same markets.
Sanctions pressure and the sanctioned-ruble question
The Russian framework arrives as the country is recalibrating its cross-border payments architecture in response to an expanding sanctions list. The 21st EU sanctions package, finalized in July 2026, extended existing restrictions to crypto firms and added enforcement pressure on platforms that have historically served as fiat on- and off-ramps for Russian users. The Bank of Russia’s draft rules do not directly address sanctions, but they do create a state-supervised channel for digital asset activity that is intended to be compatible with the country’s existing financial plumbing.
Two consequences follow. First, licensed Russian digital depositories will need to operate under close central bank oversight, with reporting and disclosure obligations that mirror what regulators expect of securities market participants. Second, the licensing regime gives the central bank a tool to either permit or restrict specific categories of digital asset activity by adjusting the rules, rather than relying on informal enforcement. Whether that supervisory capacity will be used to tighten or relax access in practice is one of the open questions the public assessment is meant to surface.
Why the tiered capital matters
The tiered capital requirements are calibrated to risk. Settlement depositories, which hold the largest balances and are most exposed to default risk, would face the highest bar. Firms that hold assets with foreign custodians, where sanctions risk is acute, would face an intermediate bar. Pure record-keeping entities would face the lowest capital bar, but they would still be subject to the disclosure and reporting framework.
For the Russian crypto market, the practical effect is that the era of gray-area digital asset trading is closing. Firms that want to hold client balances, settle transactions, or issue digital financial assets will need licenses, capital, and central bank registration. Firms that cannot meet the bar will be pushed out of the formal market, with the regulatory perimeter drawn firmly around a smaller, more transparent set of licensed entities.
What the digital assets law actually allows
The enabling digital assets bill that the State Duma passed on July 21 and the Federation Council approved on July 24 covers a narrower set of activities than a Western-style crypto market framework. It treats cryptocurrencies as a class of digital financial assets that can be issued, traded, and held by licensed entities, with the central bank holding the supervisory key. Mining is permitted under a separate track, and tokenized real-world assets are contemplated but not yet detailed in the implementing rules.
The framework also forbids the use of cryptocurrencies as a direct means of payment for goods and services inside Russia, in line with the Bank of Russia’s long-standing position. The legal status of cryptocurrencies as a permitted investment, however, is what the new licensing infrastructure is designed to make operational. The September effective date is the milestone on which the licensed market turns on.
Conclusion
The Bank of Russia’s draft rules are the first operational piece of the digital assets framework that Russia has spent years negotiating. By tying crypto activity to a recognizable securities market structure, the central bank is signaling that the future of digital assets in Russia will be institutionally supervised, not informally tolerated. The September effective date is now the milestone to watch. If the rules are finalized on schedule, Russia will join a growing list of jurisdictions that have moved from ad hoc enforcement to a structured licensing regime for crypto trading, custody, and settlement.