Moscow Exchange, Russia’s dominant securities and derivatives venue, will begin trading Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether’s USDT on December 1, 2026, running the service on the same infrastructure it uses for equities, according to Boris Blokhin, the bourse’s senior managing director for sales and business development.

Blokhin disclosed the target date at the Smartlab investment conference in Moscow on October 31, saying the exchange has already started testing crypto transactions with professional market participants and will keep admitting firms as their systems come online. “We plan to launch cryptocurrency trading from December 1,” he said, adding that several clients were already completing trades inside the test environment.

The plan marks the most substantial digital-asset initiative yet for a bourse that has long operated under close coordination with the Bank of Russia. It also moves Russian crypto activity away from offshore platforms and peer-to-peer channels and into a domestic venue supervised by local financial authorities.

A framework built on securities plumbing

The service will run from 6:50 a.m. to 11:50 p.m. Moscow time, matching the exchange’s longest stock-market schedule. Investors will submit buy and sell orders through an electronic order book, with competing bids and offers setting execution prices. The exchange also intends to offer swap transactions for liquidity management, which Blokhin compared to repurchase agreements in the securities market and swaps used in currency trading.

Reusing the existing trading infrastructure should hold down the extra costs borne by brokers and other professional participants, he said. Moscow Exchange previously confirmed that its existing trading-organizer license covers the planned service, so no additional authorization is required.

Custody will sit outside the exchange. Partner digital depositories will hold and keep records of customer cryptocurrencies, while brokers provide clients with trading access. The split follows the October registration of Russia’s first crypto exchange operators and digital custodians, a group that included institutions tied to Sberbank, VTB and T-Technologies.

Retail access comes with limits

The launch will operate under Russia’s crypto trading framework, which took effect September 1 and set rules for trading, custody and investor access. Nonqualified investors must pass a knowledge assessment before buying approved coins and are capped at 300,000 rubles in annual purchases through each intermediary. Qualified investors face no equivalent ceiling, though they must still meet applicable testing requirements.

The regulator picked Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT for retail access using criteria that include trading history, liquidity and market capitalization. Crypto payments for ordinary domestic goods and services remain prohibited, while separate provisions allow qualifying cross-border transactions in digital currencies.

ItemDetailLaunch dateDecember 1, 2026AssetsBitcoin, Ethereum, USDTTrading hours6:50 a.m. – 11:50 p.m. Moscow timeOrder mechanismElectronic order book, plus swaps for liquidity managementRetail cap300,000 rubles per year per intermediary for nonqualified investorsCustodyPartner digital depositoriesAccessBrokers provide client trading access

Note: Ruble figures are as stated in the Russian regulatory framework and are not converted.

Including USDT alongside the two largest cryptocurrencies is notable. Tether’s stablecoin is widely used for dollar-denominated settlement in emerging markets, including jurisdictions facing capital controls or sanctions exposure, suggesting the exchange aims to support value transfer as well as speculative trading.

Futures business offers a demand signal

The December plan adds direct coin transactions to a venue that already lists crypto-linked products. In September, Moscow Exchange introduced five perpetual futures tied to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP and Tron indexes, contracts that track price moves without delivering the underlying assets and are restricted to qualified investors. More than 72,000 qualified investors have traded those contracts, with cumulative turnover above 600 billion rubles (approximately $7.4 billion).

Blokhin cited that activity as evidence of investor appetite and pointed to the withdrawal of foreign crypto platforms from the Russian market as another source of demand. He said the exchange would keep gathering feedback from participating brokers through the testing period.

The rollout is not the only one in the works. Sberbank has been preparing its own crypto service for December, covering trading, custody and settlement for eligible customers.

What to watch

If executed as described, the launch gives Russian financial institutions a domestic, regulated route to crypto exposure and could pull volume away from the peer-to-peer markets that have served Russian users since Western platforms scaled back access. For a banking system cut off from much of the Western financial network, a local venue trading Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT could also serve settlement purposes for businesses outside SWIFT and other international payment rails.

How far regulators permit that use case to develop remains unresolved. The inclusion of USDT may draw scrutiny from international regulators and compliance teams at global exchanges concerned about stablecoin use in sanctions circumvention, and market participants outside Russia are likely to track transaction volumes and settlement patterns once trading begins.

Key operational questions also remain open, including the final roster of participating brokers and depositories and the pace at which additional cryptocurrencies might be added.