Russian Central Bank Reports 4.8 Trillion Rubles in Crypto Transactions

In the second and third quarters of 2024, Russian users conducted cryptocurrency transactions amounting to 4.8 trillion rubles ($45.2 billion at the time of writing), according to the central bank’s assessment. This marks an 18% increase from the previous reporting period.

As of September, the balances of Russians on cryptocurrency exchanges decreased by 15.8% compared to March, totaling 651 billion rubles. Of this, bitcoin accounted for 69%, Ethereum for 21%, and stablecoins for 10%.

The regulator attributed the outflow of assets to a decrease in market volatility, which affected trading activity.

The volume of visits by Russian users to exchange and exchanger websites rose by 56.5%, reaching 166.9 million. The share of Russians in the overall platform traffic increased to 7.5%. The main growth in activity occurred in the second quarter, when the central bank recorded the highest traffic volume from Russians since the beginning of 2022 (approximately 88 million visits).

Most often, users from Russia acquire cryptocurrencies through anonymous crypto exchangers and P2P sections of crypto exchanges. In this context, the regulator mentioned the issue of “drops” and reported that in 2024, it reduced the involvement of the banking sector in conducting high-risk P2P operations by 2.8 times compared to the previous year.

Back in May, the Russian Central Bank estimated the volume of cryptocurrency transactions by Russians at 4.5 trillion rubles.

Earlier, the regulator required 19 credit and financial institutions to check cross-border transfers of resident individuals related to the acquisition of cryptocurrencies.