What are Russia's new digital depository rules?

In brief: On July 28, 2026, the Bank of Russia published draft regulations that would create licensed "digital depositories" to record client holdings of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets, subject to tiered capital requirements running from 50 million to 250 million rubles (roughly $570,000 to $2.8 million). The rules sit under a digital-assets law the State Duma adopted on July 21 and the Federation Council approved on July 24, with the wider framework due to take full force in September.

What did the Bank of Russia actually propose?

The central bank released draft rules that extend existing securities-market regulation to digital assets and establish a new category of licensed custodian. A digital depository, under the Bank of Russia proposals, is a regulated company that records clients' ownership of cryptocurrency and other digital assets and, per Interfax reporting cited by CoinDesk, processes most transactions off the underlying network rather than settling each one on a public ledger.

That design matters for institutions. It places a supervised, auditable entity between the client and the raw asset, closer in shape to a traditional central securities depository than to a self-custody wallet. The central bank would also keep registers of digital depositories, crypto exchange operators, and the companies that issue digital financial assets, giving supervisors a single point of visibility over who is authorized to do what.

The proposals are not final. The Bank of Russia released them for public assessment, so the numbers and thresholds below could shift before adoption.

How much capital would a digital depository need to hold?

The headline is a tiered structure, and the tier depends on what the firm actually does rather than a flat license fee. Per CoinDesk's account of the draft, a settlement depository would need 250 million rubles (about $2.8 million) in capital. The requirement falls to 100 million rubles (about $1.1 million) for firms that control crypto addresses or hold assets with foreign custodians, and to 50 million rubles (about $570,000) for other digital depositories.

The quality of that capital is constrained, not just the quantity. Assets counted toward the requirement must be liquid, and any eligible financial assets have to meet the central bank's credit-quality standards. The same rules would extend to operators of electronic platforms that settle transactions involving digital financial assets, so the perimeter is drawn around function rather than nomenclature.

Read plainly, the tiering prices risk. Firms that touch private keys or reach into foreign custody carry a heavier obligation than those that simply keep records, and the settlement layer, where counterparty exposure concentrates, carries the heaviest.

Where do these rules sit in the wider framework?

The depository draft is one piece of a law that moved quickly through Russia's legislature. The State Duma adopted the digital-assets bill on July 21, the Federation Council approved it on July 24, and the framework is scheduled to come into force by September. That legislation opens a regulated domestic crypto market while keeping tight limits on how the assets can be used, a posture the central bank has held since it first floated public-market rules in December 2025.

The depository rules also build on a longer regulatory lineage. Russia has run a separate, supervised regime for digital financial assets since Federal Law No. 259-FZ took effect in January 2021. Under that law, digital financial assets represent legally enforceable rights (monetary claims, rights tied to securities, participation in a non-public joint-stock company) and are explicitly not a means of payment. That market has grown into a real one: TAdviser reported the domestic digital-financial-assets market reached 172 billion rubles across 997 issues in circulation, up 11.5 percent over the year. The new depository layer is what a market of that size needs to institutionalize: a recordkeeper with capital behind it.

Why is Moscow moving now?

Timing is not incidental. CoinDesk framed the draft as the central bank speeding up digital-asset rules following fresh Western sanctions, and the pressure is concrete. In April 2026 the European Union's 20th sanctions package escalated measures aimed at crypto-based sanctions evasion, and in July the bloc's 21st package targeted 14 firms tied to a network the EU valued at around $120 billion. A licensed, registered depository system gives Moscow a controlled channel it can supervise directly, rather than leaving activity dispersed across informal venues.

The commercial response is already forming. Sberbank, Russia's largest bank, said it plans to stand up regulated crypto trading and digital-custody infrastructure by December 1, an aggressive timeline that reads as a bet the framework will hold. When the incumbent bank commits to building custody rails against draft rules, it signals the direction of travel even before the ink dries.

What should institutions take from the design?

The more useful question for asset managers and issuers is not whether Russia is opening a market but how it is choosing to shape one. The answer is a programmable, recordable, supervised model: ownership tracked by a licensed entity, transactions processed largely off the base network, and capital scaled to the risk each participant carries. That is a composable-asset architecture built for auditability first, and it lines up with how regulated custody is being reconstructed in several jurisdictions at once.

The specifics here are jurisdiction-bound and sanction-shaped, and the numbers may yet change in consultation. But the underlying pattern (auditable custody, tiered capital, a central registry) is the same challenge any institution faces when it decides to hold or issue programmable assets against real capital, and it is the problem infrastructure like Issuant's is built to answer.

The clearest signal from Moscow is not that crypto is now welcome, but that unsupervised custody is not: whoever records the asset must be licensed, capitalized, and on the register.