TL;DR: Russia’s new regulated crypto-market framework has moved into operation, with the Bank of Russia adding firms including VTB, Sberbank and several specialist operators to registers covering cryptocurrency exchanges and digital depositories. Domestic crypto payments remain restricted, but regulated trading and custody infrastructure is now taking shape.
Russia has begun turning its new cryptocurrency rules into an operating financial system.
The Bank of Russia’s framework for registering cryptocurrency exchanges and digital depositories took effect on October 5, and the regulator has begun admitting firms to the new market structure.
VTB has been added to the register of organizations permitted to exchange cryptocurrency.
The digital depository register includes major banks such as Sberbank and VTB alongside specialist infrastructure providers.
Other approved crypto-exchange operators include Zefir, Sistema Crypto and T-Invest Lab, according to information released around the register’s launch.
That represents a substantial shift in how Russia handles digital assets.
Crypto has not suddenly become unrestricted money inside the country.
The domestic prohibition on using cryptocurrency as payment for ordinary goods and services remains in place.
Instead, the new framework separates ownership and investment activity from the use of crypto as a parallel domestic currency.
Registered exchanges can provide regulated access to digital assets, while digital depositories handle services including recording and transferring crypto holdings and providing customers with access to wallet identifiers associated with their assets.
The involvement of major banks is particularly notable.
VTB has said it expects to begin opening crypto trading access through its investment business before expanding services further.
That gives the market a distinctly different shape from jurisdictions where crypto infrastructure developed almost entirely through independent exchanges.
In Russia, some of the country’s largest conventional financial institutions are moving directly into the regulated digital asset stack.
The Bank of Russia laid out the admission process in September, setting requirements for managers, documentation and ongoing registration.
Those rules formally came into force on October 5.
The result is not crypto liberalization in the conventional sense.
It is crypto being pulled into a state-supervised framework.
That distinction will matter for users and businesses.
A more formal system could give investors clearer custody and counterparty rules while simultaneously increasing regulatory visibility over where assets are held and how they move.
Russia has spent years balancing interest in digital assets against concerns around capital flows and monetary sovereignty.
Its new registers show where that balance is landing.
Crypto trading can exist.
But increasingly, Moscow wants to know exactly who is operating it.
