Russia's Digital Currency Law Takes Effect 1 September, With Retail Limited to Three Coins

Russia's framework for digital currencies changes on Tuesday. Federal Law No. 282-FZ, "On Digital Currencies and Digital Rights", signed on 4 August 2026, takes effect on 1 September — replacing a patchwork built since 2020 with a single statute of 9 chapters and 56 articles.

What the law does

It creates a licensed domestic market. Trading in digital currencies becomes lawful when conducted through entities the Bank of Russia has entered in its registers: brokers, trustees, management companies, trade organisers, clearing organisations, digital depositories and digital currency exchange operators. The registers are new; so are the last two categories.

It keeps the payment ban. Article 1 part 6 prohibits accepting digital currencies or digital rights as consideration for goods, works, services or intellectual property inside Russia. Part 7 carves out four cases: settlement under foreign-trade contracts between residents and non-residents; receipt of digital currency from mining and from mining-pool rewards; payment of information-system fees; and payment for securities, other digital currencies or digital rights.

It formalises mining. Companies and sole traders may mine only once entered in a register kept by the Federal Tax Service; individuals without that status may mine within government-set electricity limits. Anyone with an unexpired conviction for economic crimes, crimes against state authority, or intentional offences of medium gravity or above is barred, as is anyone on the anti-money-laundering or UN sanctions lists.

And it introduces the concept of a "foreign digital instrument", to which the same requirements apply as to digital currencies — closing the route of routing activity through offshore wrappers.

A companion statute, 283-FZ, amends 21 existing federal laws to match, including the anti-money-laundering law, the currency-control law, the securities law and the advertising law. Advertising of digital-currency services now runs under a new article 29.2 requiring the provider to be named, the source of any figure disclosed, and a warning about high risk and possible total loss of funds.

The retail gate

The law itself does not say how much a retail investor may buy. It says a broker may act for a non-qualified resident only if four conditions hold at once: a passed test, an acknowledged risk notice, purchases within a ceiling set by the Bank of Russia, and admission of the currency to public trading.

The central bank filled in that ceiling in a draft directive published 11 August: 300,000 roubles per calendar year through each intermediary, and an admitted list of bitcoin, ether and USDT only, selected by capitalisation, average daily volume, and a requirement of at least five years of quoted history on foreign exchanges. Testing is mandatory for everyone, qualified investors included; the sum and list limits are not.

Two things to hold lightly here. Public consultation on that draft closed on 24 August, and as of 27 August we could not find a registered final act carrying those numbers. And the government decree setting the mining electricity limits under article 3 has not appeared either. Both are drafts until they are not.

The wider timetable

Three other Bank of Russia drafts landed in the same window: rules for organised trading and price calculation, capital requirements for digital depositories of 50 to 250 million roubles depending on scale, and — on 29 July — a draft allowing margin trading and short selling of digital currencies, open to non-qualified investors within the same limits.

Separately, and unrelated to crypto except in timing, 1 September is also the date large Russian banks become obliged to offer digital-rouble operations to customers, alongside retailers with annual revenue above 120 million roubles.

For anyone outside Russia the significance is narrower than the headlines suggest. This is not a country opening to global exchanges. It is a country building an enclosed, licensed, register-based market with a hard payment ban, a three-coin retail menu, and a cross-border carve-out aimed squarely at trade settlement.

Sources

• Law No. 282-FZ, 4 August 2026 — official publication, publication.pravo.gov.ru, No. 0001202608040007; text at consultant.ru
• Law No. 283-FZ, 4 August 2026 — publication.pravo.gov.ru, No. 0001202608040008
• Bank of Russia, 21 July 2026, on the adopted framework — cbr.ru
• Bank of Russia, 11 August 2026, draft directive on retail purchases — cbr.ru
• Bank of Russia, 27 July 2026, first three draft regulations — cbr.ru
• Digital rouble rollout schedule — cbr.ru