Russia did not phase in its new approach to digital money — it launched three different policies on the exact same day. On September 1, 2026, Federal Law 282-FZ took effect, formally legalizing regulated crypto trading and custody through licensed intermediaries. At the same moment, the country’s central bank digital currency, the digital ruble, became mandatory for major banks and large retailers. And in a third, seemingly contradictory move, the Bank of Russia added 2,600 crypto wallets tied to suspected fraud to a national blacklist. Russia’s crypto legalization arrived not as a gradual policy shift but as a single, tangled rollout with built-in tension between opening a market and tightly controlling it.
