The Moscow Exchange plans to launch trading of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether on USDT on December 1st.
The exchange stated that this will be Russia's first organized digital currency market.
The exchange stated on Monday that pilot transactions will begin as participants join the platform. The transactions will utilize its existing stock market infrastructure and will be cleared through the National Clearing Center ( NCC ), with trading hours from 6:50 am to 11:50 pm Moscow time.
The trading venue will initially support settlement on the same day and the following day, as well as swap transactions. According to the exchange, non-qualified investors must first pass a test before they can purchase cryptocurrencies, and there is an annual purchase limit of 300,000 rubles (approximately $3,700) per broker.
This launch follows closely on a Russian encryption law, the main provisions of which came into effect on September 1st. The law allows for regulated transactions, but still prohibits the use of cryptocurrencies to pay for goods and services in Russia.
Since June 2024, the Moscow Exchange and NCC have been under sanctions by the United States; the UK also imposed sanctions on the exchange in the same month. The European Union added it to its sanctions list in July 2026.
Will there be demand for exchanges that are under sanctions?
The founder of the Russian cross-border payment platform Exved, Sergey Mendeleev, told Cointelegraph that he doubts whether this proposed market can attract significant demand.
“Neither the global market nor the local market will notice anything,” he said, questioning who would trade on a sanctioned exchange.
Mendeleev was sanctioned by the UK on May 26th.
He also predicted that the trading conditions would not be competitive, and compared this potential product with the precious metals accounts of Russia's banking giant Sberbank ( Sberbank ), which allows customers to trade their account balances without actually holding the physical metal.
He warned that investors may face "extremely absurd bid-ask spreads," which is the difference between the buying price and the selling price. "For ordinary non-qualified investors, this is completely unattractive and not profitable at all," he said.
Mendeleev believes that this platform could be beneficial for cross-border payments. He stated that it would be welcome if importers and exporters could directly buy and sell cryptocurrencies from each other, but he questions whether adding another intermediary in a market where traders haggle over spreads as low as 0.05% would be competitive.
"I hope this can become a real breakthrough in foreign trade," he said.
Helen Partz Participates in the Reporting
