Moscow — Russia’s State Duma passed the first reading of a landmark crypto regulation bill that would formally legalize the use of digital assets for international settlements, offering exporters and importers a legal route to move payments that have been disrupted by Western sanctions.
The measure targets cross-border trade worth an estimated $240 billion and would allow contracts tied to that volume to be settled in cryptocurrency, while keeping domestic circulation of cryptocurrency as a payment method prohibited.
The bill’s technical outline mirrors a regulatory concept published by the Central Bank of Russia in late December 2025 and sets strict eligibility rules: only cryptocurrencies with market capitalizations above 5 trillion rubles and a five-year trading history could qualify, and Bitcoin and Ethereum are expected to be the first approvals under that standard.
Retail participation would be tightly limited. Non‑qualified retail investors would face an annual purchase cap of 300,000 rubles through any single intermediary — roughly $3,800 USD — while qualified investors would face no volume restrictions. Licensed platform trading under the new regime could begin on July 1, 2026, and unlicensed platforms would face a complete ban effective July 1, 2027.
The timing matters because the bill is explicitly a legislative response to sanctions that have severed many major Russian banks from global payment infrastructure, including SWIFT. Lawmakers wrote the proposal to create an alternative mechanism for settling import and export contracts after traditional routes were cut off, a move that would directly affect how income from cross‑border trade is collected and processed.
Those who would use the new framework include exporters and importers who now handle bills of lading, foreign contracts and settlement accounts tied to roughly $240 billion in annual trade. The bill does not change the ban on using cryptocurrency inside Russia; its scope is narrowly focused on international settlement corridors.
The State Duma Committee on Protection of Competition has already warned that the draft risks over‑regulation. That objection highlights a tension at the heart of the proposal: lawmakers are moving to authorize crypto for a specific economic function while imposing stringent eligibility, investor and licensing rules that could limit liquidity and practical use.
Another friction point is procedural. Despite clearing the first reading, the bill must pass two additional readings in the Duma, win approval from the Federation Council and receive the president’s signature before it becomes law. Each of those steps creates opportunities for amendment, delay or rejection, and the July 2026 and July 2027 implementation dates hinge on timely enactment of the statute as drafted.
If the measure becomes law in its current form, licensed platforms could open for trading from July 1, 2026, giving exporters and importers a regulated channel to settle contracts with approved cryptocurrencies, potentially shifting settlement flows away from sanctioned banks. But the strict market‑cap and five‑year trading history requirements, the retail purchase cap and the looming ban on unlicensed venues could leave the new market narrow, favoring large institutional players and leaving smaller firms dependent on intermediaries.
The practical question the Duma has now left unanswered is whether a legal, tightly regulated crypto corridor will be wide enough and liquid enough to substitute meaningfully for the parts of the global payment system Russia has lost. The bill creates a legal path for settlement but builds that path so narrowly that its capacity to replace traditional banking links — and to preserve exporters’ income streams at scale — remains uncertain until the remaining legislative steps are completed.
