Russia wants to treat crypto transfers like bank transfers and strip out anonymity

Russia’s crypto-market overhaul is moving toward a rule that would force transfers to carry sender and recipient information, with transactions above 1 million reported to Rosfinmonitoring. For PSPs, exchanges, and banks touching the market, the direction is clear: more identity data, more reporting, and more pressure on any flow that looks “high risk.”

1. By 1 July, Russia plans to adopt a law that would add a new requirement for crypto transfers: no anonymous payments. Market participants would have to attach information about the sender and recipient to crypto transactions, and deals above 1 million would have to be reported to Rosfinmonitoring.
2. The Central Bank wants digital custodians to receive client risk-assessment data and, in turn, restrict operations for people marked high risk. If simplified identification is enough for some activity today, the new law may introduce additional identification — extra data, including information on beneficial owners and ultimate beneficiaries.
3. Digital custodians and crypto exchanges would also be allowed to delegate identification to banks or brokers. That follows directly from the government bill on crypto-market regulation, which is aimed at formalizing the sector rather than leaving the whole thing in the familiar gray zone.
4. There is, of course, a gap between regulation on paper and what actually happens on-chain. The source text makes the point bluntly: blockchain does not naturally support the kind of identity controls regulators want, and this works only for the Central Bank’s own digital ruble, where every transaction is visible to the regulator and KYC is built in from the start.
5. For Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, and similar assets, the problem is that users often choose them precisely because they do not want to disclose beneficiaries. The text also says the state may next block ruble on-ramps and off-ramps through Russian banks, introduce blacklists of privacy coins, and require licensed companies to pass data under the Travel Rule.

The practical takeaway for high-risk operators is pretty simple: Russia is pushing crypto toward bank-style traceability, but the source also makes clear that a full closure of the market is still not the plan — and that if pressure gets too high, activity tends to migrate to gray exchangers and foreign jurisdictions.