Sberbank headquarters building in Moscow for a report on its crypto trading and custody plans.

Russia’s Largest Bank Is Building a Crypto Depository. Most Customers May Never Touch the Blockchain

By Isaac • July 25, 2026 8:01 pm • Comments

Russia’s largest bank is preparing to place cryptocurrency inside a familiar banking structure.

The public blockchain will remain underneath it, but many customers may deal almost entirely with Sberbank’s internal records.

Sberbank is targeting December 1, 2026, to have crypto trading infrastructure and a digital depository ready, according to First Deputy Chairman Alexander Vedyakhin.

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The depository would record customers’ ownership rights and account for most activity outside each asset’s primary blockchain. Active wallets would handle deposits, withdrawals and transfers that must reach the network.

December 1 is Sberbank’s target, rather than proof that the service is already live.

Interfax says the depository will record client rights to cryptocurrency and account for operations outside the primary blockchain. The July 24 announcement, delivered through Sberbank’s press office, also says active wallets will execute customer transfer instructions when assets need to move on-chain.

Purchases, sales and transfers between customers could be reflected on Sberbank’s internal ledger without broadcasting a separate transaction to the public network each time. That can reduce on-chain fees and settlement delays for activity kept inside the bank’s system.

When a customer deposits crypto, withdraws it or sends it beyond the closed system, an active wallet can execute the necessary blockchain transfer. The bank’s ledger would track which customer owns what while the public chain records the bank-controlled wallets.

Vedyakhin said Sberbank is prepared to help develop the remaining rules for depository accounting, bookkeeping and licensing. Those rules will determine how the new intermediaries maintain records and operate under supervision.

The arrangement resembles the internal accounting used by centralized exchanges, where a displayed account balance is a claim recorded by the intermediary. A public blockchain generally records the intermediary’s wallets rather than a separate address for every internal customer trade.

Sberbank is giving that custody model a bank-regulated role: digital depository.

Russia’s framework borrows from securities-market structure, assigning separate jobs to exchanges, intermediaries and repositories.

The Bank of Russia says the law takes effect September 1, 2026, and establishes a licensing transition through July 1, 2027. Crypto exchanges will trade assets, while digital repositories will maintain records of ownership rights within the supervised system.

Non-qualified investors may buy the most liquid cryptocurrencies after passing a test, with purchases limited to 300,000 rubles per year through one intermediary. Qualified investors must also pass a test but may buy and sell any cryptocurrencies without an amount cap.

The framework creates roles for crypto exchanges and digital repositories alongside banks, brokers, management companies and organized trading venues. Domestic cryptocurrency payments for goods and services remain prohibited even as supervised investing becomes legal.

Exporters and importers have a separate lane. The central bank says foreign-trade participants may use cryptocurrency for cross-border payments through intermediaries or directly through wallets.

Russia is therefore opening regulated channels for investment and international settlement while keeping crypto out of ordinary domestic checkout. A digital repository records legal rights to assets; it does not give every customer a public self-custody wallet.

Sberbank has already tested crypto custody inside a conventional banking product.

Interfax reported in December 2025 that Sberbank completed a pilot corporate loan secured by cryptocurrency mined by Russian data-center operator Intelion. The one-company transaction tested whether a bank could control volatile digital collateral within a conventional commercial loan.

Sberbank used its Rutoken storage system to safeguard the collateral. The bank said the pilot tested digital-security and liquidation processes that could inform future regulation and commercial products.

Deputy Chairman Anatoly Popov said the process could eventually serve miners and other companies holding crypto assets. That would extend the bank’s involvement beyond one experimental loan.

Sberbank has also offered crypto-linked securities that provide price exposure without delivering coins to investors. A depository would go further by custodying and accounting for the underlying coins.

It would place trading, custody and settlement under one regulated operator, with internal ownership records separated from the public wallets holding the assets. That architecture carries the pilot’s custody work into a broader customer market.

Public exchange access will be narrow at first.

CoinDesk reports that cryptocurrencies admitted to public exchange trading are expected to maintain an average market value above 5 trillion rubles and average daily trading volume above 1 trillion rubles. Both tests would be measured over two years, preventing a short-lived price or volume spike from satisfying the threshold.

At the exchange rates used in the reporting, those levels were roughly $64 billion in market value and $12.8 billion in daily volume. Most listed tokens are far below that scale.

The thresholds would confine the public lane to the deepest global assets, while qualified investors could reach a broader market through other supervised channels. They are access criteria, not an approved coin roster.

No final eligible coin list exists because the regulator has not published one. No particular asset can be treated as officially approved before that happens.

Licensing work will continue after the law takes effect, and market participants have until July 1, 2027, to obtain approvals and bring existing operations into compliance.

Vedyakhin expects substantial secondary regulation covering depository records, bookkeeping and licenses for new intermediaries. Sberbank’s December 1 date remains a target for its infrastructure, not confirmation that every service or asset has final approval.

The customer tradeoff is already visible.

A bank-operated depository can make crypto easier to buy, report, inherit and use as collateral. Customers would not need to manage seed phrases, run wallets or wait for every internal trade to settle on a public chain.

That convenience changes the trust model. Sberbank controls the active wallets, and its ledger tells customers what they own.

Withdrawals depend on the bank’s systems, compliance rules and access to the underlying network. The underlying cryptocurrency remains on its blockchain, but the customer’s everyday experience resembles a securities account more than self-custody.

The structure can reduce routine contact with the blockchain without removing the blockchain from settlement. It moves the customer-facing record into the bank and reserves on-chain transactions for the points where assets enter, leave or travel outside Sberbank’s books.

That is the model Sberbank plans to have ready by December 1: public crypto assets held through bank-controlled wallets, with most customer activity recorded on a private ledger.

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