Russian Finance Ministry proposes lowering requirements for obtaining especially qualified status within experiment on organized cryptocurrency trading

MOSCOW. Sept 3 (Interfax) - The Finance Ministry considers it possible to lower the requirements for obtaining the status of an especially qualified investor in order to expand the pool of participants in the experimental legal regime (ELR) for organized cryptocurrency trading, Director of the Finance Ministry's Financial Policy Department Alexei Yakovlev told to journalists on the sidelines of the 2025 Eastern Economic Forum (EEF 2025).

In March, the Central Bank of Russia sent a proposal to the government to allow cryptocurrency transactions within the ELR for the category of especially qualified investors. This is a new status that citizens are expected to be able to obtain if their investments in securities and deposits exceed 100 million rubles or if their income for the previous year was more than 50 million rubles.

"We are discussing exactly these figures [100 million rubles in investments and 50 million rubles in income for the previous year]. We believe these criteria can be adjusted downwards. That is exactly what is being discussed now," Yakovlev said.

He did not specify exactly how much the requirements for especially qualified investors could be lowered.

"The criteria, on the one hand, should limit the potential circle of participants, but on the other hand, they should not create conditions where we deny, let's say, access to the legal infrastructure to some of the most sensitive parts of the population. Since this will precede the development of permanent regulation, we need to test all the processes so that we are not looking at a very small segment," he said.

"Proposals to lower this limit may be considered, as I said, so that the segment of citizens who fall into it [the experiment] is more substantial and we can test all the processes," he said.

In a letter to the government, the Central Bank said that it still does not consider cryptocurrency as a means of payment, and therefore it proposes to simultaneously introduce a ban on settlements between residents for cryptocurrency transactions outside the ELR, as well as to establish liability for violating the ban.

Currently, in Russia citizens have the right to buy and own cryptocurrency, but using it for settlements within the country is prohibited. Due to the absence of a Russian centralized exchange, digital currency can only be purchased on foreign trading platforms.