The Moscow Exchange plans to let clients trade cryptocurrencies starting in December and has begun testing operations with professional market participants, a senior executive said last week.
“We are actively testing. We started a week ago,” Boris Blokhin, the exchange’s senior managing director for sales and business development, told journalists on the sidelines of the Sber Investments forum, according to a Thursday Interfax report.
The exchange — the biggest in Russia — will work with a partner settlement digital depository, where market participants will open accounts. It won’t need any additional permits or licenses to launch trading, Blokhin added.
The plan follows Russia’s law on digital currencies and digital rights, which took effect in September and sets comprehensive rules for crypto in the country.
Trades can run through existing infrastructure such as exchanges, brokers and trust managers. New players will also join, including crypto exchangers, where assets are bought and sold, and digital depositories, which record ownership.
Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, announced last month it was the first in the country to have been approved to custody bitcoin. The Bank of Russia gave it the green light for “digital currency record-keeping” and to facilitate the transfer of such assets, covering bitcoin and other, smaller cryptocurrencies.
Russia’s relationship with Bitcoin is complicated. President Vladimir Putin in 2024 seemed to praise the original cryptocurrency back in 2024. “For example, Bitcoin, who can ban it? Nobody,” he said at a forum at the time.
But the Kremlin keeps a tight grip on what citizens can do with it. Using crypto as a form of payment has been illegal in Russia since 2022; unqualified investors can buy bitcoin and stablecoins capped at 300,000 rubles ($3,556) a year through a single intermediary.
Qualified investors can buy any cryptocurrency traded on exchange and over-the-counter markets, with no limit.
President Putin in October signed a law to set in stone the regulation of digital currencies and digital rights in the country.