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Russia's New Crypto Rules Hit September 1. Here's What They Actually Say. Russia's new legal framework for crypto trading, custody, and settlement takes effect September 1. It's the regulatory foundation Sberbank is building its December crypto launch around. The rules are worth understanding beyond the headline. Public crypto trading will be restricted to assets meeting strict liquidity and market cap thresholds. In practice: BTC and ETH as the primary accessible assets at launch. Crypto payments for goods and services inside Russia remain prohibited. The framework legalizes crypto as a financial instrument to be held and traded, not as a currency. Full licensing requirements for intermediaries don't kick in until July 2027. That gap is deliberate: it gives banks a year to build infrastructure before full compliance is required. Sberbank's December target is designed to operate in that pre-licensing window. The broader context matters here. Russian crypto volumes spiked during the post-2022 sanctions period as a parallel settlement mechanism. The new framework is partly an attempt to bring that activity into a regulated domestic structure the government can monitor and tax, while preserving sanctions-resistant cross-border settlement rails. This is a state co-opting crypto, not adopting it on crypto's terms. The distinction matters when analyzing what kind of institutional adoption this actually represents. Share your thoughts in the comments 👇