Russia to impose fines for crypto payments next year

Starting from next year, authorities in Russia are going to impose fines for cryptocurrency payments that have been banned since 2021.

According to a new law, the use of digital coins as a means of payment in the country will also be punished with confiscation of the assets involved.

Russians will be fined for paying with cryptocurrencies

Payments with decentralized digital currencies like Bitcoin will result in substantial fines for Russian citizens and businesses from 2026 onwards, the local press reported, quoting a prominent member of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.

The government’s plan was revealed to Izvestia by Anatoly Aksakov, head of the chamber’s Committee on Financial Markets. He told the Daily that deputies will consider a bill introducing the penalties this fall in order to define liability in a currently gray area.

According to the legislation, drafted jointly by the Bank of Russia and the Ministry of Finance, private individuals who pay with crypto will face fines in the range of 100-200,000 rubles (over $2,500), and companies will be fined between 700,000 and 1 million rubles (almost $13,000).

Additionally, it provides for the seizure by the state of the illegally used coins, the newspaper noted. In April, the executive power in Moscow approved amendments legalizing the confiscation of cryptocurrency by recognizing it as property in criminal proceedings.

Since Jan. 1, this year, crypto assets have been recognized as property also in the Tax Code in order to regulate the taxation of related activities such as mining, which was legalized in 2024, and trading, which is allowed under limited circumstances.

While the exact amounts of the monetary penalties were announced by the Director of the Legal Department at the Central Bank of Russia (CBR), Andrey Medvedev, during the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum in May, it was unclear when they would be enforced.

Russia faces numerous use cases for crypto in payments

Russia’s monetary authority has been a strong opponent to legalizing domestic crypto payments, maintaining that the ruble, including its digital form, should remain the only legal tender.

At the same time, it also agreed to oversee an “experimental legal regime” (ELR) facilitating crypto exchange and settlements in foreign trade to help Russian firms bypass Western sanctions.

Using cryptos to pay for goods and services has been banned in Russia since the enforcement of the law “On Digital Financial Assets” (DFAs) in 2021. Despite that, Russians have been spending digital coins, and such transactions scored a 2.5 increase in the first year of the war in Ukraine, which started in 2022.

The use cases include not only transfers of funds abroad, in circumvention of financial restrictions, but also remunerating employees, like developers who moved to other countries. Last week, Izvestia quoted labor authorities warning that paying salaries in crypto will also result in hefty fines for companies.

Cryptocurrency payment is often associated with unofficial employment, Alexey Gorelkin, a specialist in the field of information security, told the publication. He elaborated:

“This is a common option for Russian citizens who do remote work in our country for companies outside of Russia. At the same time, Russian companies rarely work directly with crypto, preferring to use it as additional motivation, as property incentive rather than wages.”

Video games have provided another opportunity to employ digital currencies in payments, with Web3 platforms often opting to transact in a cryptocurrency generated within their gaming projects, according to Ivan Kalmykov, an IT expert quoted by the daily.

Various services and Telegram bots processing crypto payments, including through QR codes, have been quite popular in Russia as well. An estimate suggests that up to 400 of these continued to operate two years after the enforcement of the coin payment ban.

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