Once the Central Bank approves the rules, investors—both professional and non-professional—will be able to trade cryptocurrencies on margin, and brokers will be permitted to accept digital assets as collateral. Limits for non-professionals will be set by the Bank of Russia; their exact amounts are not specified in the draft. To participate in trading, investors will need to pass a test. Additionally, for non-qualified market participants, leveraged trading will be subject to an annual limit on purchasing digital currencies—no more than 300,000 rubles through a single intermediary.
Margin trading involves conducting trades not only with the investor’s own funds but also with borrowed capital from the broker. These trades are considered riskier: if the asset’s price rises, profits will be greater than if the investor traded only with their own money. However, if the asset’s price falls, the loss will also be doubled.
According to the draft document, a broker may accept digital currencies and rights as collateral for margin transactions only if two conditions are met: the asset must be approved for trading on a Russian exchange, and the clearing organization must assign it a risk rate—that is, determine a percentage indicating how risky the asset is in terms of sharp price fluctuations. The Central Bank will include digital assets in the list of liquid assets eligible for use as collateral. A broker may forcibly close a margin position only through non-addressed orders; other methods are permitted only if no transactions are conducted using address-identifiers.
Digital currencies and central bank rights are subject to existing risk coverage regulations—NPR1 and NPR2. NPR1 reflects the difference between the portfolio value and the initial margin, while NPR2 reflects the difference between the portfolio and the minimum margin. If both metrics fall below zero, a margin call is triggered: the broker is required to forcibly close the client’s positions to limit their losses.
The central bank also defined when different cryptocurrencies or digital rights can be considered “identical” for risk calculation: cryptocurrencies are deemed homogeneous if they are interchangeable and operate within the same information system, including through a single smart contract, and digital rights are considered homogeneous when they belong to the same issuance and circulate within the same system.
Recently, the Bank of Russia established requirements for digital custodians, which must appear on the Russian market starting in September to account for crypto assets and digital rights.