Sberbank plans crypto trading and custody in Russia by December 2026

Russia’s largest bank is building crypto trading infrastructure, and it has a deadline.

CoinDesk reported on July 25 that Sberbank plans to launch crypto trading and custody infrastructure by December 1, 2026. The plan includes a digital depository that records clients’ crypto ownership, with most transactions processed off the main blockchain.

The deadline follows the law

The timing is no accident. Russia’s new crypto framework takes effect September 1, 2026, and Sberbank’s December target puts it among the first movers under the new rules.

The framework gives the Bank of Russia broad oversight and defines five categories of licensed participants, from exchanges to custodians. It draws clear lines around what is allowed:

• Public trading will be limited to cryptocurrencies that clear strict liquidity thresholds, roughly a $64 billion average market cap
• Domestic retail payments in crypto remain banned
• Cross-border settlements get a legal lane

In practice, the liquidity threshold restricts public trading to only the very largest assets, while the cross-border carve-out points at what the state actually wants crypto for: settlement channels, not consumer payments.

Adoption or control

A state-controlled bank running crypto custody is a genuinely ambiguous milestone. Read one way, it is adoption: the country’s dominant financial institution building regulated rails for an asset class that spent years in legal limbo. Read the other way, it is control: crypto ownership recorded in a bank depository, transactions processed off-chain, and the central bank overseeing every licensed participant.

Both readings can be true at once. The infrastructure Sberbank is describing brings crypto inside the regulated financial system precisely by removing the parts that made it hard to supervise.

What to watch

Two dates now frame the story: September 1, when the law takes effect, and December 1, when Sberbank says its infrastructure will be live. How many other Russian banks follow, and which cryptocurrencies actually clear the liquidity bar, will show whether this becomes a real market or a tightly fenced experiment.