Bank of Russia moves against USDT-to-cash arbitrage as banks start blocking transfers to Belarusian crypto exchanges

The basic trade is simple: move money from a Russian bank to another country, usually Belarus, buy USDT there, and then sell it for cash through Russian crypto exchangers. The thing is, banks are already treating the route as suspicious, and that matters for any PSP or banking partner touching CIS crypto flows.

1. The scheme relies on the spread between the non-cash and cash USDT rate. A typical cycle, as described by RBC, involves either a bank transfer from Russia to an account abroad or a cash deposit used to top up an account on a Belarusian exchange before buying USDT.
2. After that, the user sells the asset for cash through Russian crypto exchangers. WhiteBird co-founder Sergey Cherechenya said the return on one such “circle” can be 2% or more, and some users reportedly move “hundreds of millions of rubles per day” this way, according to experts quoted by RBC.
3. The Bank of Russia treats these operations as “a scheme for laundering funds of unidentified origin.” RBC found that banks are increasingly blocking transfers to Belarusian crypto exchanges if they were preceded by a cash deposit of an equivalent amount. Sergey Yudakov, author of the Telegram channel “That same 115-FZ,” said Russian crypto exchangers do not provide documents that banks consider sufficient to prove the transaction is real.
4. In Russia, the arbitrage itself is not prohibited, and individual steps in the chain are not illegal on their own. But RBC’s experts say the structure is not fully legal because the main issue is selling crypto for cash. Since USDT is treated as a currency value, settlements are supposed to go through a bank account, according to the sources cited by the publication.
5. There are no official explanations yet from the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Russia, or the tax service, and there is no settled court practice either. Still, under laws adopted this year, digital currency is effectively treated like fiat, which gives tax authorities grounds to pursue sellers for foreign exchange violations. RBC experts said the scheme will effectively stop working from 1 July 2027, when direct purchases of USDT via CIS platforms through a Russian bank and subsequent cash-out through the current model will no longer be possible. The Bank of Russia separately reminded that direct crypto transfers between individuals via p2p platforms will be banned from 1 July 2027 under the law on state regulation of the digital asset market that entered into force in summer.