Sberbank Vaults Into Crypto Custody, Russia Finally Lets the Banks Touch Bitcoin 🏦

Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, has been added to the Bank of Russia's first register of authorized cryptocurrency custodians, formalizing its entry into a digital-asset market that opened under new rules on Sept. 1. The central bank published the initial registers on Tuesday, listing four crypto exchange operators and five digital-asset custodians, with Sberbank joined on the custody roster by Atomyze, Voltari and Cloud Infrastructure. VTB Bank appears on both the exchange operator and custodian lists, while T-Invest Lab, Zefir and Sistema-Crypto make up the rest of the trading-platform registry.

Sberbank said on Monday that it had applied for digital custodian status and plans to roll out its first crypto products on Dec. 1, offering $BTC, $ETH and USDT (USDT) through its existing SberBank Online, SberInvestments and SberBusiness platforms. The bank also indicated it intends to expand lending activity based on digital assets once operations are live. Firms on the registers are subject to regulations covering trading, custody, record-keeping and internal controls, with full compliance against all legal and operating requirements of the framework required by next September.

The registrations stem from crypto legislation signed by President Vladimir Putin in August, which brought exchanges, custodians, brokers and investors under a single regulatory structure supervised by the Bank of Russia. The law preserves Russia's prohibition on using cryptocurrency to pay for goods and services, even as it legitimizes the surrounding infrastructure. The move comes alongside broader digital-currency developments in the country, with the Bank of Russia reporting that accounts for its digital ruble surpassed 220,000 in the pilot's first month, nearly four times its central bank forecast.