In the second and third quarters of 2023, Russian users’ bitcoin investments fell, mirroring a broader drop in activity on crypto exchanges. This is stated in the latest отчете Банка России о финансовой стабильности.
The main channel for Russians to acquire digital assets is P2P trading, with the average monthly volume of such trades up 53.9% from the same period in 2022.
In the third quarter, the central bank logged 28.9 million visits by Russians to the largest crypto trading platforms (exchanges, P2P sites and exchangers), down 27.8% from last year.
Meanwhile, the aggregate inflows and outflows of bitcoins on the largest crypto exchanges attributed to Russians, in Q2–Q3, declined by 22.4% to around 700 190 BTC (1.68 trillion rubles), according to regulator estimates.
Holdings of bitcoins on exchanges that, according to the central bank’s estimates, may belong to Russian users, fell by 3.1% year on year to 96 912 BTC (255 billion rubles) at the end of Q3.
The appeal of the crypto market for Russians is growing, thanks to the opening of exchanges oriented toward Russian users and to interest in stablecoins as an alternative store of value amid sanctions, according to the report’s authors.
From the start of 2022 through the third quarter of 2023, trading volume in the USDT/RUB pair exceeded that in BTC/RUB by 2.3 times, totaling around $2 billion.
According to the regulator, Russians’ activity in the crypto market may pose risks to income given volatility and widespread fraud.
According to Chainalysis data, Russia ranked 13 место in the global cryptocurrency adoption ranking for 2023.