Bank of Russia opens informal talks with crypto market participants on access to the legal market

The Bank of Russia is holding informal consultations with banks, brokers, depositories, trading organizers, and crypto exchangers about their admission to Russia’s legal crypto market. For high-risk payment players, the important bit is that market access is being framed as a regulated process with multiple gates, not a single licence.

1. First Deputy Governor Vladimir Chistyukhin said the consultations were discussed at the Moscow Financial Forum and include both financial institutions and non-financial organisations that exchange cryptocurrency.
2. Applicants will be able to submit requests for licences and for inclusion in registers only after the first-line acts are adopted, published, and enter into force. Chistyukhin said these first-line documents will cover the registers themselves and qualification requirements.
3. The Bank of Russia has already finished collecting proposals on a draft instruction that sets the rules and conditions for trading digital currencies and digital financial assets on an organized market.
4. The regulator also published draft capital requirements for digital depositories: at least 50 million rubles, 100 million rubles for work with foreign systems, and more than 250 million rubles for settlement depositories. These digital depositories will store and account for digital assets on the organized Russian crypto market.
5. According to the source text, access to the legal market is not designed as a single licence. An intermediary must be entered in the regulator’s register and connected to a licensed trading organizer, so approval will depend both on qualification requirements and on whether the trading infrastructure is ready to accept the participant.

The source also says digital depositories will have to maintain registers of depositors, assets, transactions, and client accounts, recording every operation. Participants will also need substantial upgrades to the infrastructure of information system operators, especially information security systems, which points to material implementation costs before any market entry.