Russia is preparing tighter crypto rules that could leave retail investors with access to only Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT. Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov said the draft bill will use economic mechanisms to steer users away from tokens regulators consider “unfriendly,” a category tied to assets that can be frozen at the request of foreign authorities.
Assets with freeze controls are at the center of the bill
Under the proposal, Russian citizens without qualified investor status would be limited to trading BTC, ETH, and USDT. Other dollar-backed stablecoins and BNB would be left off the official retail whitelist. The reasoning is straightforward: issuers or affiliated entities behind those assets may have the ability to block wallets.
The report notes that both Tether and Circle can freeze certain addresses following law enforcement requests. It also says Tether recently froze $344 million in line with US authorities, while Binance has reportedly introduced fresh restrictions for Russian users.
Fees are only one part of the package
The Russian government has not published an exact fee schedule for what it classifies as “foreign” tokens. Freedom Global analyst Vladimir Chernov estimates the surcharge could fall between 0.5% and 2% for non-compliant tokens, with stablecoins potentially facing charges of up to 3%. He also warned that overly aggressive pricing could push activity into unregulated channels.
SharesPro founder Denis Astafyev expects the measures to go well beyond commissions. Mandatory investor testing, annual transaction caps, withdrawal waiting periods, and restrictions on transfers to external wallets are all said to be under discussion. If adopted, those rules would narrow how retail users move assets off-platform and manage funds onchain.
Cross-border volume and local licensing are key policy targets
The policy shift reaches beyond domestic trading desks. Chainalysis data cited in the report shows Russia processed about $376 billion in crypto transactions from July 2024 to June 2025, the highest total in Europe. Legal expert Yuriy Brisov said Russian investors pay roughly $15 billion in annual fees to overseas exchanges, and Moscow wants that flow redirected to licensed local platforms.
A wider regulatory package tied to the bill is also expected to bring compulsory exchange licensing from July 1. According to the report, foreign platforms without local authorization and a physical office could be blocked entirely, while Roskomnadzor is developing DNS-level filtering tools that would make direct access to overseas exchanges much harder for Russian users.
Retail and institutional access would be treated differently
The bill draws a firm line between retail and institutional participants. Retail investors would face an annual investment ceiling of 300,000 rubles, would need to pass eligibility tests, and could only trade a narrow list of approved assets. Professional and institutional investors would keep broader market access.
Vladimir Chistyukhin, First Deputy Governor of the Russian central bank, said there are no near-term plans to expand the retail list beyond Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT. He also said ruble-pegged stablecoins are expected to receive priority over foreign alternatives.
The moves come as Russia-linked crypto infrastructure faces heavier pressure from Western governments. The report says the UK sanctioned 18 entities in May, including HTX. In April, Grinex, an exchange under US sanctions, stopped operating after a cyberattack that caused losses of 1 billion rubles.