Russia’s parliament just passed a bill letting retail investors buy Bitcoin.
Mandatory exam. $3,900/year cap. Passed by the State Duma yesterday, July 21.
Not a rumor. Not a Telegram translation. The actual bill. 🧵
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New licensing registry for exchanges, custodians, and brokers.
Existing platforms get roughly a year to register.
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Retail investors can buy the most liquid crypto assets (bitcoin’s the obvious flagship) through a registered intermediary — but only after passing a knowledge test.
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The retail cap: 300,000 rubles (~$3,900) per year, per intermediary.
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Qualified investors also have to pass a test, but face no purchase cap. Prior trading history can count toward qualifying.
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Owning ≠ spending.
This bill legalizes buying and holding bitcoin. It does not legalize using it as money.
Paying for groceries in bitcoin is still banned domestically — the ruble keeps its monopoly on everyday transactions.
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Carve-outs: foreign-trade settlement, mined crypto, and some securities transactions are exempt from that ban.
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Banks are now required to block transfers to anyone they suspect of running an unregistered exchange.
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Timeline: first reading was back in April. Most provisions take effect Sept 1.
It still needs to clear the Federation Council and get signed into law. Expected, but not done yet.
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The part worth sitting with: a government that’s spent years treating bitcoin as a threat to its monetary sovereignty just built a formal, licensed path for its own citizens to buy it.
Gated by an exam and a cap. But a path.
That’s the move a state makes once it accepts it can’t kill the protocol — so it regulates the door instead.
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Genuine question: does “exam + cap to start, uncapped once you qualify” count as a country actually opening the door to bitcoin?
Or is it just a more polite capital control?
Where’s the line for you?
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I track moves like this across dozens of jurisdictions.
Full breakdown + country-by-country comparisons in my newsletter 👇
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