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Russia Names Its Three Approved Coins

Russia Names Its Three Approved Coins

Verified · 12 Aug 2026Institutional TransitionAug 12, 2026

The Bank of Russia published a draft directive naming Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT as the only cryptocurrencies eligible for public exchange trading, under criteria requiring roughly $61 billion average market cap, $12 billion daily volume and five years of foreign price history — thresholds XRP misses. Non-qualified investors would face a 300,000-ruble (~$3,650) annual cap per intermediary and a mandatory risk test; qualified investors face no limit. Comments run until August 24, following the law signed August 4.

Russia: the escape hatch got a five-year moat

Russia will let ordinary people buy bitcoin on regulated exchanges — the central bank named its approved list this week: Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, nothing else. The bar is deliberate: only coins that are huge, liquid, and have five years of foreign price history qualify. It's not a bet on crypto's promise. It's a bet that these three are old enough to be predictable.

Notice why Russia wants this at all. Cut off from Western banking after invading Ukraine, it legalised crypto for cross-border payments to move money sanctions can't touch. So the state that bans paying for coffee in bitcoin embraces it for slipping past the West — while capping its own citizens at roughly $3,650 a year. Crypto for the state's needs; pocket money for the people's.

One name on the list gives the game away, though. USDT's issuer has already frozen millions belonging to sanctioned Russian exchanges when American authorities came knocking. Russia went looking for money nobody can freeze — and approved one coin nobody can freeze, and one whose off switch sits in the West. The difference between those two is the entire lesson, and Moscow just put it on the national curriculum.

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