Russia moves to widen legal crypto trades under state oversight

Russia’s State Duma advanced a crypto-market bill with 327 of 340 deputies backing it in a first reading, according to Bitcoin Magazine, clearing a path for broader legal peer-to-peer trading while pushing most activity toward licensed intermediaries overseen by the Bank of Russia. If adopted, the measure takes effect July 1, 2026. Moscow would get, for the first time, a clear legal framework for a market that has long sat in the grey zone between tolerated use and formal restriction.

The proposal is less a retail-crypto endorsement than a control mechanism. Reports by Cryptopolitan and Crypto Briefing say the bill would legalize some direct P2P cash deals only as an exception to a wider prohibition. Broader market access would run through authorised channels. Russia appears to be widening the legal perimeter for digital-asset activity without giving up the state’s ability to decide who can trade, through whom and on what terms.

Dmitry Novikov, the LDPR lawmaker behind the amendment, was blunt. “The amendment legalizes such trades as an exception to the general prohibition,” he said, according to Cryptopolitan. The same report set out an annual purchase cap of 300,000 rubles for non-qualified investors. The number signals that policymakers still want a hard line between supervised participation and open-ended retail speculation.

Reports also indicated the framework could selectively whitelist tokens, including TRX and SOL. None of the available accounts spelled out how such a list would be drawn up, revised or enforced, so the token angle looks secondary for now. The nearer-term signal is institutional: who gets a licence, what kind of venue stays lawful and how much discretion the central bank gains over the plumbing of Russia’s legal crypto market.

Control over access

The three reports agree on the direction of travel even where their wording differs. Bitcoin Magazine described the vote as part of a push to legalize cross-border crypto settlements while tightening market controls. Crypto Briefing said the bill would regulate the market and phase out unsupervised P2P transactions. Cryptopolitan homed in on the carve-out that would still permit some direct cash deals. The common thread: Russia is not heading for a free-for-all. It is building selective legalization around a narrower set of approved routes.

The market is not small, and that is the point. Cryptopolitan cited finance ministry deputy Ivan Chebeskov putting daily Russian crypto transaction volume at 50 billion rubles. At that scale, moving even a portion of activity from informal channels to licensed venues would be meaningful for surveillance, reporting and capital management. A rulebook built around licensed intermediaries would also give authorities more levers to decide which products reach retail users and which stay confined to qualified investors or institutional channels.

The reports reviewed by Scram News do not answer the hard implementation questions. They do not spell out licensing standards, how offshore platforms would be treated or where the line sits between a lawful private transfer and a grey-market transaction. Nor do they resolve whether a token whitelist — if one gets written into the final framework — would be shaped by liquidity, technical criteria, sanctions risk or some other policy filter. Those details will determine whether the law channels existing demand into a monitored system or simply redraws the boundary between legal and tolerated trading.

Why the proposal matters

For traders and intermediaries, the signal is not that Russia is embracing crypto without reservation. Officials appear willing to formalize a larger slice of the market on their own terms, leaning on investor classification and central-bank supervision as much as on headline legalization. The result is a market structure where access can expand, but only inside a framework that gives the state more visibility over flows and more leverage over which assets and venues survive.

The more eye-catching token reports should be treated cautiously until a final text is public. If the bill keeps moving, the decisive question will not be whether peer-to-peer trading is acknowledged in principle. It will be which intermediaries receive licences, which tokens qualify for legal distribution and how aggressively the Bank of Russia uses that authority. Those choices, not the headline about broader P2P trading, will show whether Moscow wants crypto to function mainly as a regulated payment rail or as a broader retail market.