Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, has been added to the central bank’s register of crypto exchange providers, CoinDesk reported on 13 October, citing Interfax. Earlier this month it joined the register of digital depositories, which record clients’ crypto holdings.
Registered dealers can buy and sell crypto with their own funds outside organised exchanges. Sberbank has said it plans to open crypto trading to all clients on 1 December, through the apps they already use, and is testing bitcoin, ether and the dollar stablecoin USDT.
The central bank will set the final list of permitted coins. A law that took effect on 1 September created the regulated market of banks, brokers, exchanges and depositories that Sberbank is now entering. The bank has also been building a crypto wallet this year, and It has also spent this year building a crypto wallet.
It is a sharp turn. In 2022 the Bank of Russia proposed banning domestic crypto exchanges and barring Russian financial firms from handling crypto at all.
The permission has limits. Paying for goods and services in crypto inside Russia is still prohibited. From July 2027, crypto transactions must pass through registered intermediaries, which CoinDesk said would effectively shut out peer-to-peer trades settled through Russian bank accounts.
The 1 December date is Sberbank’s stated plan, not a confirmed launch.
The missing piece is scale. Neither the bank nor the regulator has said how many customers are expected to trade, or how much of the existing peer-to-peer market a regulated, supervised alternative can pull away from the informal one.
