Central Bank of the Russian Federation: Russians make transactions with cryptocurrencies worth $ 5 billion every year

November 2021

Every year Russians make transactions with cryptocurrencies worth $5 billion, or approximately 350billion rubles. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation provided such data in its review of the financial stability of Russia published at the end of November 2021.

The volume of transactions with cryptocurrencies in Russia is comparablewith investments of Russians in shares of foreign companies. Thus, according to the Bank of Russia, in 2020, Russian residents invested 474 billion rubles in foreign securities. However, the Central Bank notes that it is incorrect to interpret the estimated volume of transactions with digital assets as a flow of citizens’ savings into cryptocurrencies.

Firstly, data on trading turnover may reflect alternate purchases and sales, and secondly, part of this volume is sales of digital currency obtained as a result of mining, the Central Bank noted.

According to the regulator, Russian users are among the most active participants in the cryptocurrency market, including the Binance exchange.

The volume of transactions with digital currencies is actively growingand the number of users from Russia and on other equally large international platforms for trading digital currencies, the document says.

At the same time, the Central Bank believes that operations with digitalcurrencies are risky for financial stability and investors. Thus, the justification is given for the anonymous nature of transactions involving cryptocurrencies, due to which they are actively used in criminal activities.

In addition, the regulator is concerned about the transferthe population of part of their savings, in particular, in stablecoins - this is similar to the problem of foreign exchange, when citizens massively use foreign currency for savings. At the same time, unpredictable fluctuations in the value of digital assets do not allow them to become a reliable tool for savings, according to the Central Bank.