U.S.-sanctioned Moscow Exchange to list bitcoin and Tether’s USDT in December

Russia’s largest stock exchange is going after the offshore crypto market. Starting Dec. 1, Moscow Exchange will let Russians trade bitcoin, ether and USDT on the screens they use for Sberbank and Gazprom shares.

The exchange announced on Monday that trading will run from 06:50 to 23:50 Moscow time, matching its stock market hours. The National Clearing Centre will clear the trades, with same-day or next-day settlement and swaps for managing liquidity.

Both the exchange and its clearing house are under U.S. sanctions. The U.S. Treasury blocked Moscow Exchange and the National Clearing Centre in June 2024 and issued wind-down licenses for dealings with them.

USDT, the dollar stablecoin on the launch list, is issued by Tether, which freezes wallets that land on the Treasury’s sanctions list.

Retail access comes with limits, however. Ordinary investors have to pass a test and can buy no more than 300,000 rubles of crypto a year, roughly $3,700, through a single broker. Qualified investors have no cap.

Deputy Chairman Anatoly Popov told TASS in late August that trading under Russia’s new crypto rules could reach as much as 4 trillion rubles, or about $49 billion at current rates in the first year.

In February, Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov pegged Russia’s crypto turnover at 50 billion rubles a day. Sberbank’s first-year figure works out to about 11 billion rubles a day, so most of the flow would stay on offshore exchanges and peer-to-peer desks.

CoinDesk has requested Tether for comment on how its freezing policy applies to USDT held through Moscow Exchange’s clearing house.