Western sanctions may turn Russia into a marketplace for “tainted” cryptocurrency sold at discounted prices, according to a key participant in the country’s soon-to-be-regulated digital-asset market. Russia is poised to legalize coin transactions in September, but the assets circulating there are likely to prove too toxic for international counterparties to touch.

Russia said to build an “exotic market” for tainted cryptocurrency

Western sanctions may result in the establishment of an isolated Russian market for digital assets that foreign players would not want to work with, according to the chief executive of a leading Russian broker. That, in turn, means the coins traded there will likely be offered at a discount to global prices.

Vladislav Kochetkov, chairman of the management board of the financial group Finam, made the comments to Russia’s official TASS news agency. Speaking ahead of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF), a major international conference to be held in the far-eastern city of Vladivostok next week, he stated: “Sanctions could lead to Russia becoming a market for ‘tainted’ cryptocurrencies, that is, assets that have passed through restricted addresses or platforms and are therefore toxic to international counterparties.”

The tainting he describes is a compliance mechanism rather than an intrinsic property of the coins: blockchain-analytics firms trace transactions on public ledgers, and funds that pass through addresses tied to sanctioned entities are routinely flagged by exchanges’ risk systems. That scrutiny has already touched Russian crypto infrastructure — the EU banned crypto-asset services for Russian residents in 2022, the US Treasury sanctioned the Russia-linked exchange Garantex, and in 2025 Tether, whose USDT stablecoin is among the assets cleared for the new Russian market, froze wallets linked to the platform.

Such conditions could make the Russian market “extremely exotic,” with coins trading at a significant discount to international benchmark rates, Kochetkov emphasized. The problem, in his view, goes beyond being cut off from global liquidity. “It’s about the formation of a separate, isolated price circuit, operating by its own rules,” he elaborated. A comparable discount dynamic has already been documented in other sanctioned Russian exports, most notably crude oil sold below global benchmarks under the G7 price cap.

Moscow to legalize cryptocurrency transactions on September 1

Finam intends to join the regulated Russian crypto market as a major participant, operating both as a broker and an exchange, Kochetkov said in excerpts of an interview published Thursday.

The nation is preparing to legalize crypto transactions such as investment and trading under a new law, “On Digital Currency and Digital Rights,” adopted by the Russian parliament in July. The legislation — Moscow’s first attempt to comprehensively regulate the digital-asset sector — was signed by President Vladimir Putin in early August. The main provisions of the nearly 300-page legal document will enter into force on September 1, 2026, as previously reported by Cryptopolitan.

The statute builds on an experimental regime adopted in 2024 that let approved participants use digital currencies for cross-border settlements, a channel Russian officials embraced as sanctions complicated conventional payment routes. The new law, by contrast, concentrates on domestic investment and trading, with supervision assigned to the Bank of Russia.

Discussing the matter, Kochetkov unveiled: “Yes, we plan to join the Russian cryptocurrency market, and as a leading player. In terms of roles … definitely, we will be a broker and a crypto exchanger.”

Finam was among the first Russian companies to offer crypto derivatives to qualified investors, alongside Sberbank and MOEX, after the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) allowed it in May 2025.

Under the new regulatory framework, traditional firms such as banks and brokers are permitted to enter the coin space under their current licenses and act as intermediaries. The law also implements a licensing regime for crypto-specific platforms, such as existing exchange offices, and introduces a new category of participants — “digital depositories” — which will be responsible for the safekeeping and accounting of crypto holdings. Domestic transactions will only be possible through authorized entities.

Finam has yet to decide whether it will set up its own depository, Kochetkov said in the interview with TASS, excerpts of which were published on Thursday and Friday. “No decision has been made yet, and the reason is purely economic: it’s expensive,” he remarked, adding that such an investment would take at least 3 billion rubles ($35 million) and eight years to pay back.

Russian coin market to be “speculative, rigid and liquid”

The “digital currency” law will, for the first time, give non-professional investors in Russia a legal opportunity to put money into decentralized and fiat-pegged digital assets. However, these will be limited to only the most liquid and capitalized cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as Tether’s stablecoin USDT. In addition, investments will be capped at less than $4,000 a year per intermediary.

Those guardrails echo the cautious approach the central bank took when it first allowed crypto exposure for qualified investors only, keeping retail participation narrow and tightly capped. How the market functions in practice will only become clear once the law takes effect in September 2026 and the first licenses are issued under the new regime.

Russia’s cryptocurrency market will be primarily speculative, rather than focused on acquiring crypto for settlements or storage in personal non-custodial wallets, the CEO of Finam believes. “As usual, we are following our own path and departing from the classic crypto ideology of free movement of assets without intermediaries,” he noted.

Kochetkov is also convinced that while the Russian market will be built on “rigid architecture, unusual for cryptocurrency,” it will nevertheless be “fully functional and liquid.”