Russia wants crypto transactions treated more like bank transfers

The Bank of Russia is preparing to plug digital custodians into its “Know Your Customer” anti-money-laundering platform, so crypto transfers would come with the same kind of customer-risk controls banks already deal with. For high-risk PSPs, the important part is simple: the state is moving crypto activity deeper into the same compliance stack used for traditional finance.

1. The Bank of Russia plans to share client risk assessments with digital custodians, and those custodians will have to restrict operations for suspicious high-risk clients. In practice, that puts crypto intermediaries closer to the same monitoring logic banks and brokers already live with.
2. Vlada Korchagina, adviser to the director of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service, said the central bank will add digital custodians to the anti-money-laundering platform “Know Your Customer.” She also said the new rules will affect companies already operating in the traditional financial market.
3. If a client of a broker or trust manager wants to move into the crypto market, they will have to go through “re-identification,” meaning they must provide missing data, including information on beneficiaries and beneficial owners. Today, some transactions can still be done with simplified identification.
4. The same identification model has been working for years with banks and other financial institutions. Under a government bill on crypto regulation, digital custodians and crypto exchanges will be able to delegate identification to banks or brokers.
5. The Bank of Russia also plans mandatory control over five types of crypto transactions, although Korchagina did not name the list. She said transactions above 1 million rubles will have to be reported to Rosfinmonitoring, and the travel rule will require digital custodians, brokers and other market participants to attach sender and recipient information to crypto transfers.

Korchagina said digital custodians will become fully integrated into the system and will have to accompany transfers of digital currency and digital rights with information about both the sender and the recipient. The bill has already passed its first reading in the State Duma and is now heading for the second. For non-professional investors, the expected permitted assets are bitcoin, ether, USDT and USDC.