According to Rossiyskaya Gazeta (rg.ru), lawmakers approved Bill No. 1194918-8, “On Digital Currency and Digital Rights,” in its second and third readings on July 21. The vote sends the measure to the Federation Council, Russia’s upper chamber, and then to President Vladimir Putin for signature. Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the Duma’s Financial Markets Committee, said the day before the vote that the goal was creating legal conditions for the functioning of cryptocurrencies in the country.

The bill classifies bitcoin and other digital assets as property under the Russian civil code, not as currency. The ruble remains the only legal tender for domestic transactions.

The Bank of Russia will license five categories of market participants: exchanges, brokers, custodians, management companies, and exchangers. Banks will be barred from routing payments to unlicensed foreign platforms. Existing operators get a transition window, with full licensing enforcement due by July 1, 2027.

Non-qualified retail investors can buy up to 300,000 rubles, about $3,800, in crypto per year through a single licensed intermediary, and must pass a risk-awareness test first. Qualified investors get a higher ceiling, roughly 3 million rubles. Privacy-focused coins are excluded on anti-money-laundering grounds, narrowing eligible trading largely to assets like bitcoin, ethereum and USDT.

The law’s central feature lets Russian companies use crypto to settle international trade, a channel that matters given Russia’s exclusion from SWIFT after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Domestic crypto payments remain banned.

Russia’s Finance Ministry has estimated domestic crypto trading runs close to 50 billion rubles, around $640 million, a day, much of it outside formal oversight. The new law aims to move that volume into licensed channels.

The Federation Council has 14 days to act once it receives the bill, and Putin then has 14 days to sign it. Both steps are considered formalities for government-backed legislation. If signed on schedule, core provisions take effect September 1, 2026, the same date Russia begins rolling out its digital ruble at major banks and retailers.

Banks are already positioning for the new market. Sberbank has said it plans to launch a crypto wallet by December, and VTB has discussed building out custody services.

The bill followed a long path: the government submitted it on April 1, the Duma passed a first reading on April 21 with 327 of 340 votes, and the Financial Markets Committee cleared the revised text on July 8 before recommending it for the second reading on July 16.

Putin signed earlier legislation authorizing crypto mining in August 2024, a move that helped make Russia the world’s second-largest bitcoin miner behind the United States. The new bill builds on that framework by adding trading, custody, and settlement rules that the country lacked.

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