Russia’s Finance Ministry does not want to admit dollar stablecoins to trading

Russia’s Finance Ministry says foreign stablecoins should not be allowed into the country’s regulated trading environment, warning that assets such as USDT and USDC could be blocked directly in users’ wallets. For high-risk payment firms, the important part is not the headline ban talk but the mechanics: once wallets interact with licensed, Central Bank-approved platforms, the risk profile changes fast.

1. Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov said on RBC radio that foreign stablecoins could be blocked in users’ wallets if Russian authorities let them into trading. He specifically pointed to the largest stablecoins by market capitalization — USDT from Tether and USDC from Circle.
2. Chebeskov said risks for stablecoin holders would rise sharply once their wallets start sending transactions to platforms licensed by the Central Bank. He also acknowledged that there have already been cases of dollar stablecoins being blocked for Russian legal entities.
3. By contrast, he said there have been no reported cases of Bitcoin or Ether freezes so far, because there has been no technical ability to do that. That matters for PSPs and exchanges because the state is drawing a practical line between assets it can and cannot touch at the infrastructure level.
4. The Finance Ministry expects special legislation for stablecoins. According to Chebeskov, officials are now discussing which stablecoins would be allowed into the state-controlled market, with priority going to tokens pegged to the ruble and to currencies of friendly countries.
5. The Central Bank would keep the power to change that list at its own discretion. Chebeskov said the issue of admitting foreign stablecoins into the “regulated Russian contour” sparked debate: market participants wanted to preserve the ability to invest in such assets, while the Finance Ministry and the Bank of Russia initially opposed including stablecoins among legal investment instruments.

The government bill on state control of crypto circulation has already passed its first reading in the State Duma and is now moving to the second. Under the bill, non-professional investors would face heavy limits, including an annual cap of 300,000 rubles on crypto investments and a mandatory cooling-off period for withdrawing digital currency from an account on a licensed platform.