Russia hands retail investors Bitcoin, Ether and USDT — with a yearly spending cap

Russia's central bank is cracking the door open. Starting Nov. 17, non-qualified investors can buy Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT under a new crypto investment framework, the Bank of Russia said Friday. Exchanges got the green light to offer those three assets for public trading.

Everyday investors won't have to go it alone — brokers, asset managers and crypto exchanges can all handle the trades, including over-the-counter deals. But there's a leash: purchases are capped at 300,000 rubles per year for each intermediary. Qualified investors skip that ceiling entirely and can buy any cryptocurrency without limits.

Nobody gets in untested. Both retail and qualified investors must pass an assessment test and work through the risks of crypto investing before they can transact. It's the central bank's way of making sure people know what they're signing up for.

The approved list is deliberately short. The Bank of Russia said it picked only the most liquid digital assets, using criteria written into legislation: market capitalization, average daily trading volume, and at least five years of pricing data from international exchanges. The goal is to keep retail investors away from thin, young tokens that can swing hard.

That filtering logic is the whole point of the framework. By shutting out assets with weaker liquidity and shorter track records, the central bank says it's cutting the investment risk for ordinary Russians while still letting them into the market.

The move threads a needle Moscow has been working on for a while — bringing crypto trading inside the regulatory tent instead of leaving it in the gray. For now, the clock is ticking toward Nov. 17, when the first capped, tested, approved trades can go through.