Russia’s central bank would let retail traders buy only bitcoin, ether and USDT

Russia’s central bank has drawn up a list of exactly three assets retail investors will be allowed to trade on regulated exchanges: bitcoin, ether and USDT. That’s the whole list. Tether's dollar-linked token is the only stablecoin that made the initial cut.

The draft rules cap non-qualified investors at 300,000 rubles, around $3,600, of crypto purchases per year at each intermediary. Qualified investors don’t face the cap at all.

The cap has a gap built into the wording

Read the phrasing carefully and the 300,000-ruble ceiling isn’t what it first looks like. It applies per intermediary, not across an investor’s total purchases.

So an investor who opens accounts at several brokers or exchanges could stack the allowance and end up with far larger aggregate exposure than the headline number suggests. Whether that’s deliberate or a drafting artifact, the text as written permits it.

What the July legislation left blank

This whitelist fills in a hole. Legislation passed in July opened regulated crypto trading from Sept. 1 but never specified which assets retail investors could actually buy.

The three-name list is the answer to that question. Everything outside it stays off-limits for non-qualified investors on regulated venues.

Trading isn’t spending

One line that hasn’t moved: crypto payments inside Russia remain prohibited. Buying bitcoin through a regulated intermediary is one thing. Paying for anything with it is still off the table.

That separation matters more than the asset list does. A regulated trading venue with a three-token menu is a controlled investment channel, not a parallel payment rail, and the draft rules keep it that way.

Why the USDT choice stands out

Of the three, USDT is the interesting inclusion. Naming a single dollar-linked stablecoin as the only one on the initial list gives Tether a position no competitor has inside Russia’s regulated perimeter.

Bitcoin traded at $64,185.98 and ether at $1,912.21 at the time of the draft. Those are the two assets a Russian retail investor will be able to hold on a regulated exchange, alongside a dollar proxy they can’t spend domestically, up to 300,000 rubles a year per intermediary, starting Sept. 1.