Journalists at Forbes calculated that the total outstanding obligations of only four issuers reached 1.8 billion rubles.
A security token is a tokenized asset, typically a bond, that grants the investor the right to receive coupon payments according to predefined parameters.
According to Cbonds data, last year the number of companies that experienced a technical or full default on securities and bonds reached 35—three times higher than the previous year’s figure. Of these, 14 bond issuers and 10 securities issuers failed to repay their debts after the technical default period expired; in 2024, there were only four such cases.
The trend intensified in the summer of 2026, when EuroTrans recorded four technical defaults on its CFDs within a single week, failing to pay investors a total of 168.8 million rubles.
In June, the volume of defaults on debt instruments amounted to RUB 1.09 billion, with approximately 69% of the defaulted obligations linked specifically to CFDs—primarily due to large outstanding debts from issuers that continue to fail to meet previously assumed obligations, according to the Bank of Russia’s “Review of Financial Market Risks.” Market participants anticipate up to 25 new default cases by the end of the year.
Experts surveyed by Forbes cited the primary cause as high corporate debt burdens amid expensive credit and insufficiently thorough creditworthiness analysis of many platforms used for issuing digital assets. Since most platform operators are not required to conduct full credit analysis of issuers, they often rely solely on superficial scoring systems—resulting in issuers with merely passing scores later being unable to meet investor obligations. Analysts at Forbes note that even a small decline in revenue or delayed payments from counterparties can quickly lead to cash flow gaps. This was the case with the car dealer “Avtositi,” which attributed its default to auto loans that were too expensive for Russian consumers and a decline in vehicle sales.
Experts at the magazine note that market regulation remains insufficiently developed. The Digital Assets Law lacks a clear definition of “digital asset default” and the institution of a collective representative for digital asset holders, as exists with securities, where a broker may act on behalf of investors. In practice, this legal gap allows issuers to delay payment deadlines and offer exchanges of problematic digital assets for new instruments without a rigorous process for investor approval, while information system operators do not bear liability comparable to that of exchanges or custodians regarding issuer quality.
The number of digital securities issuers continues to grow. At the end of 2023, when the market was just forming, there were only 85 issuers; by 2024, this number rose to 244, and at the beginning of this year, it reached 375. According to the Central Bank of Russia, the total value of outstanding digital securities issues reached 1.37 trillion rubles as of April 1, compared to 683.7 billion rubles on January 1. Year-over-year growth amounted to approximately 4.5 times, and since the start of 2023, the market has expanded in monetary terms by more than 80 times.
In April, the Russian Ministry of Finance developed new tax rules for crypto-assets. Regular payments from such instruments will be taxed similarly to interest on loans. For ruble-denominated crypto-assets issued by Russian entities and traded on organized markets, a preferential tax rate will apply—similar to bonds.