Russia's deputy finance minister says 20 million citizens hold crypto
Ivan Chebeskov estimates 20 million Russians have invested 3.7 trillion rubles in crypto, used for foreign trade, mining and savings, as Moscow builds a licensed exchange sector.
Key points
- Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov estimated at least 20 million Russians have invested in crypto products.
- The funds total 3.7 trillion rubles, split across foreign trade settlements, mining and savings or trading on foreign exchanges.
- Russia ranks 16th in Chainalysis's latest Global Crypto Adoption Index and second globally by mining hashrate.
- Analyst Alexander Potavin said stablecoins suit trade payments because they carry no volatility.
- Moscow is licensing national exchanges to draw capital home while banning crypto for domestic payments in favour of the digital ruble.
Russia's Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov has estimated that at least 20 million Russians have invested in crypto products, according to Bitcoin.com News. He put the total at 3.7 trillion rubles, and said more investors are expected as rules to license national exchanges and bring crypto capital home take effect.
An investigation by Izvestia, cited in the report, divided those funds into three pools. The first is foreign trade settlement, which matters because Russia is cut off from the SWIFT banking system. Banks in friendly countries such as China and Turkey can also face secondary sanctions when serving Russian customers buying dual-use goods like microelectronics and automotive components.
The report says stablecoins suit that trade use best. Finam analyst Alexander Potavin stressed that these assets carry no volatility, which makes them practical for settling cross-border payments.
Three pools of crypto
The second pool covers mining. Russia still ranks second worldwide by hashrate, behind only the United States, even though the government has extended existing mining prohibitions to more zones. Miners spend on electrical transformers, data centres and electricity, which the report says creates jobs and generates tax revenue that the government expects to keep growing.
The third and largest pool is speculative trading and savings held on foreign exchanges. Russia has started passing legislation to bring those funds home, letting qualified and non-qualified investors hold and trade cryptocurrencies inside the country's regulated exchange sector.
Domestic payments remain a different matter. The government does not allow crypto for everyday payments inside Russia and has instead backed the digital ruble, a central bank digital currency under direct state supervision. Potavin told Izvestia there is no need to raise domestic demand for bitcoin and other digital assets, warning it could pull money out of deposits and create risks of financial losses.
Trade and mining
He argued the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance should focus on steering crypto towards foreign payments, since internal demand acts as a devaluation factor against the ruble. Chainalysis's latest Global Crypto Adoption Index ranks Russia 16th among nations for crypto adoption, underlining how widely the assets are already used.