The so-called transition period will end on July 1, during which the state granted cryptocurrency exchanges time to obtain a license from the Central Bank of Russia. Starting in July, banks will be required to block transfers to cryptocurrency services without a license. As a result, domestic cryptocurrency prices will begin to diverge from global prices—similar to the situation with physical U.S. dollars, believes Brisov. A premium will emerge for purchases within Russia, while “Russian coins” on foreign exchanges will trade at a discount: international buyers will factor in the risk associated with the asset’s origin.
No one can say today how large this gap will be, but its emergence appears almost inevitable. Investors will avoid the stablecoin USDT due to the risk of freezes. Therefore, if Bitcoin and Ethereum do not die out within a year, they will become an alternative to traditional investment options," said an expert from RBK.
The Russian crypto market will become "boring and uninteresting" to most domestic investors—as the government intends—says co-owner of Digital & Analogue Partners. Due to restrictions on non-professional investors, only a small portion of individuals will be able to open crypto accounts, and digital assets will primarily be used by companies for international transactions. However, sanctions risks remain high here as well.
"Banks abroad that receive transfers from Russia’s licensed system will have to explain their origin to their own regulators. Public registries maintained by the Central Bank, which will include all Russian platforms, appear to Western sanction authorities as a ready-made list of targets," concluded Brisov.
“The investment environment for ordinary crypto investors will become extremely restrictive. Legal access will be available, but the cost of this legality for non-accredited investors will be virtually no full real control over their assets, which will effectively be impossible to transfer to non-custodial wallets,” said a top executive in a conversation with RBK.
There are other risks, warns the head of Technobit. About six months after the launch of organized trading, he expects large-scale hacker attacks—and even if they are repelled, the very fact of such attacks will demonstrate the system’s vulnerability: the concentration of services among a few major players creates a single point of failure.
In the first year after the government's cryptocurrency regulation law takes effect, the annual turnover of the legal market will reach approximately 3.5–4 trillion rubles—just 20% of the current volume of crypto transactions, according to Anatoly Popov, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sberbank.