Crypto exchanges and digital depositories in Russia will be able to apply for inclusion in official registers from 5 October, when new Bank of Russia rules come into force.
The change creates a formal route into the regulated crypto market envisaged by legislation that took effect in September. However, applications will still require an individual decision from the regulator, and the new procedure does not itself authorise customer trading.
The Bank of Russia confirmed the arrangements in a notice published on 24 September. The rules also apply to operators of information systems used to issue digital financial rights.
They set qualification requirements for managers and certain other senior officials, specify the documents that applicants must provide and establish how decisions on register entries will be made. Firms must demonstrate that they meet those conditions before the central bank considers their applications.
The rules therefore explain how businesses can seek admission, rather than granting any particular operator the status it is requesting.
How applications will be assessed
The electronic application form for exchange operators will be available from 5 October. Under the standard process, the Bank of Russia will have 30 working days to reach a decision once it has received the final required document.
For a digital depository, the ordinary decision period is 60 working days.
Those deadlines are decision windows, not guaranteed approval dates or commitments that trading will begin. The relevant period starts when the application is complete, rather than automatically on 5 October, when the rules take effect.
Exchange operators and digital depositories also have different standard review periods. As a result, the common start date for the regulations does not create a single timetable for firms to enter the market.
Some banks, brokers and participants in an experimental regime may qualify for a quicker notification procedure, depending on the function for which they are applying. Eligible firms must submit their documents before 1 September 2027, although entry into the relevant register will still depend on a regulatory decision.
Russia’s crypto legislation came into force on 1 September. It provides for the purchase and sale of crypto assets through regulated intermediaries, requires testing for both qualified and non-qualified investors, and imposes an annual purchase limit of 300,000 rubles per intermediary on non-qualified investors.
Those provisions describe the structure of the planned market, while the October rules deal with the process for admitting firms.
The assets that non-qualified investors will be permitted to buy are subject to a separate process. In August, the central bank included Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether’s USDT in a draft directive on assets for public exchange trading. The proposal was opened for comment, but the October admission rules do not make that list final.
The next significant decisions for investors will be the Bank of Russia’s rulings on individual applicants and the outcome of the separate asset-list procedure. The creation of an admission process alone does not mean regulated retail crypto trading is available.
