Russia’s Largest Bank Forecasts $46 Billion in…
Russia’s largest lender has put a number on how big its newly legalized crypto market will be in its first year, and the number is striking mainly for how small it is. Sberbank projects that no more than about 4 trillion rubles ($46.43 billion) of crypto will change hands on regulated Russian exchanges in the year after the country’s new trading rules take effect on September 1, its deputy chairman Anatoly Popov told the state news agency TASS on August 29, ahead of the Eastern Economic Forum.
The forecast matters less as a headline figure than as a measure of what legalization does not change. Most crypto activity in Russia is expected to keep flowing outside the regulated venues the new law creates, and the state-linked bank making the projection is also positioning to profit from the slice that does come onshore.
What Russia’s Sberbank Actually Forecast
Popov’s numbers are a derivation, not a raw estimate, and it is worth following the arithmetic, as he laid it out to TASS. “According to Finance Ministry data as of February, the daily volume of cryptocurrency transactions in Russia is around 50 billion rubles, or roughly 18 trillion rubles a year,” he said. “SberCIB Investment Research analysts have a fairly conservative estimate: in the first year after legalization, around 20% of this volume, or 3.5-4 trillion rubles a year, will be traded on exchanges. This figure could rise to 4.75-5.25 trillion rubles by 2028 and to 7.5 trillion rubles [$87.06 billion] by 2029.”
So the $46 billion is not the size of Russia’s crypto market. It is the fraction, roughly a fifth, that Sberbank expects to migrate onto regulated exchanges in year one, against an existing base the Finance Ministry pegs at about 18 trillion rubles, or $650 million a day. Chainalysis ranks Russia as Europe’s largest crypto market by transaction volume, and much of that has run through offshore platforms.
Why the On-Exchange Number Stays Small
Popov gave two reasons the regulated slice starts modest. Most transactions will keep “bypassing exchange trading,” he said, and while the law takes effect September 1, professional participants have until July 1, 2027 to obtain their licenses, “meaning the market will not reach full maturity over the next year.”
The rules themselves cap how fast on-exchange volume can build. Under the framework, which legalizes trading while banning crypto payments, non-qualified retail investors are limited to 300,000 rubles, about $3,645, a year through each intermediary, and only after passing a knowledge test. The Bank of Russia has approved just Bitcoin, Ether and USDT for retail trading, chosen for market capitalization, liquidity and at least five years of price history. The design pushes activity onshore gradually rather than all at once, which is exactly what Sberbank’s ramp toward 7.5 trillion rubles by 2029 describes.
Investor Takeaway
The $46 billion is on-exchange volume, not market size. Sberbank’s own figure captures only about a fifth of the roughly 18 trillion rubles of existing Russian crypto activity, so the headline number describes what migrates onshore in year one, not the whole market.
The Bank Forecasting the Market Also Wants to Lead It
Sberbank is majority government-owned, and it is not a neutral observer of the market it is sizing. In the same run of TASS interviews, Popov said the bank plans to accept Bitcoin, then Ether and USDT, as loan collateral once the central bank clears the assets for public circulation. “We plan to accept not only Bitcoin but also Ethereum and the stablecoin Tether as collateral,” he said, adding the expansion begins only “after the Central Bank, of course, allows them for public circulation.”
Sberbank already ran a Bitcoin-backed lending pilot with mining firm Intelion in December 2025, and its digital financial asset issuance reached 408 billion rubles in 2025, more than five times the prior year. So the same institution projecting a small-but-growing regulated market is building the exchange, custody and lending products to capture it.
How Russia’s Approach Compares Abroad
Russia is legalizing trading while keeping crypto out of everyday payments and carving out cross-border settlements, an emphasis shaped by sanctions rather than retail demand. That contrasts with where the major Western regimes now sit. In the EU, the MiCA framework is fully in force, with the transitional grace period for legacy licenses having ended July 1, 2026. The UK enacted its cryptoasset framework in February and opens FCA authorization applications on September 30. And in the US, the GENIUS Act has put stablecoin issuers under federal rules, while the broader market-structure bill, the CLARITY Act, still faces a Senate vote expected in September.
Where those regimes are building comprehensive on-ramps, Russia is building a walled garden, regulated trading inside, payments locked out, and a deliberate door left open for cross-border trade.
Investor Takeaway
The tell is onshore migration, not the dollar figure. Watch whether regulated exchange volume rises toward Sberbank’s 7.5-trillion-ruble 2029 target, or whether the offshore market that handles most activity today proves stickier than a state-run venue.
The Bottom Line
Sberbank’s forecast is a useful and self-interested reality check on what September 1 delivers. Legalization creates a supervised venue and legal standing for Russian crypto holders, but on the bank’s own numbers it converts only about a fifth of existing activity in year one, with the rest staying offshore until licenses, testing and caps loosen their grip.
The figure to watch is not the $46 billion itself but whether on-exchange volume actually climbs toward it as the July 2027 licensing deadline nears and whether banks like Sberbank succeed in pulling activity onshore or the offshore market simply proves stickier than a state-run venue can overcome.