Russia Limits Retail Crypto to Bitcoin, Ether and Tether

The Bank of Russia is placing new limits on cryptocurrency trading for retail investors.

The proposed rules, published Tuesday (Aug. 11) by the Russian central bank, would allow those investors to trade only bitcoin, ether and Tether’s USDT stablecoin, limiting them to 300,000 rubles (around $3,600) of crypto purchases per year with each currency.

“To protect unqualified investors from sharp and unpredictable fluctuations in cryptocurrency prices, only the most liquid cryptocurrencies will be available to them,” the proposal said.

The news follows a report last month from CoinDesk that Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank, was planning to launch a crypto wallet and digital depository this year.

The new services will become part of the Sberbank Online and SberInvestments platforms once Russia passes its bill “On Digital Currency and Digital Rights,” due to take effect next month. The wallet would give Sberbank clients access to authorized cryptocurrencies within the bank’s apps. Sberbank also wants to develop a digital depository for crypto tokens.

“As regulations emerge, we will prepare a service for our clients. Essentially, it will be a crypto wallet, which we will implement first in Sberbank Online and SberInvestments,” said Kirill Tsarev, first deputy chairman of the bank’s management board.

These developments follow years of resistance to crypto by the Bank of Russia. The central bank called for a ban on crypto in 2022—covering trading, mining and usage—arguing the tokens were a danger to Russia’s financial stability and monetary policy.

Russia’s Finance Ministry pushed a bill that went against the bank, blocking crypto payments while keeping the room for licensed trading. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, President Vladimir Putin signed a law strengthening the crypto payments ban.

In other crypto regulation news, the chances of the U.S.’s Clarity Act began to fade this week when the Senate departed Washington for a five-week recess without voting on the digital asset legislation.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune pushed a procedural vote that could help the Clarity Act move to the Senate floor when lawmakers return in September. This cloture vote is set for Sept. 15 and will signal whether the bill has a future, according to a Reuters report.

That same report added that many analysts and lobbyists are skeptical about the Clarity Act’s prospects. That’s because the bill still faces pushback from key Democrats, the Senate has many other items on its agenda, and Senate sessions are likely to be reduced because of the midterm elections in November.