Moscow Exchange Sets December 1 for Dollar-Backed USDT, Bitcoin and Ethereum Trading

Boris Blokhin Details the December Pilot

Tether (USDT) price holds near one US dollar because the issuer keeps reserves against every token issued, and that dollar-backed mechanism is exactly what Moscow Exchange (MOEX) now intends to open to Russian investors through its regulated market. In a statement dated Saturday, October 31, 2026, the exchange said it plans to begin trading in Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH) and the dollar-backed stablecoin on December 1, 2026. Its senior executive Boris Blokhin, speaking at the Smart-Lab conference in Moscow, said the new rulebook would give investors controlled access to crypto assets and confirmed that technical preparation is still under way. The initial list is deliberately narrow: the two largest cryptocurrencies by market value and the dollar-pegged token, with no other assets confirmed for the first stage. Blokhin said trading would run on the exchange's existing stock market infrastructure, a choice meant to lower the cost for brokerage firms of connecting to the system and to let investors trade through mechanisms they already know from equities; the remarks were carried by Russian financial media. Execution is planned through a central order book, and swap transactions are also included among the supported order types. The exchange is running technical tests with professional market participants and says enough of them are on board to move to a pilot in December. Custody and the records of who owns what will sit with authorized crypto custodians rather than with a personal crypto wallet address. Trading hours are set at 06:50 to 23:50 Moscow time (UTC+3), a window drawn to sit as close as possible to the venue's current equity sessions. The December 1 date is a target, not a guaranteed start, and it depends on how the remaining technical work proceeds.

Russia's legal framework for these trades took effect on September 1, 2026, and it splits investors into two categories. Non-qualified investors, once they pass a required knowledge test, may buy at most 300,000 rubles of crypto per year through any single intermediary, and at launch that access is confined to the high-liquidity assets the regulator has approved, which are Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH) and USDT. Qualified investors face no monetary cap and may trade the full range of crypto permitted on the venue, though they must also pass tests showing they understand the risks; the central bank's own press release sets out this two-tier design. The system therefore does not create a market where anyone can buy without limit. The regulator's position has moved a long way in four years. In January 2022 the Bank of Russia published an assessment proposing comprehensive bans on crypto trading and mining, arguing that the assets threatened financial stability and monetary policy, but that proposal never became a nationwide prohibition. The 2026 framework instead moves crypto activity onto supervised financial infrastructure: investment through authorized intermediaries is allowed, while paying for goods and services with crypto inside Russia remains banned. Cross-border payments under foreign trade contracts follow separate rules, with exceptions available, an area where an IMF study puts the cost of a $200 stablecoin remittance at 2.18 percent. The per-intermediary annual cap means a retail investor's buying power is set broker by broker, and only qualified accounts escape it.

What the 300,000 Ruble Cap Means for Demand

For COINOTAG's reading, the decision matters less as a new listing than as a change of venue for demand that already exists: Russian users have reached USDT through channels outside the regulated market, and a December pilot would route part of that flow through a central order book with custody rules attached. The 300,000 ruble retail cap will likely spread small-buyer demand across several brokers rather than concentrate it at one. Confidence in the backing behind Tether's dollar peg supports the case for a listed venue, and the issuer's Q3 attestation reported excess reserves of $7.95 billion. Comparable regulated rails can absorb serious volume: tokenized stock products on one major exchange settled 64.9 billion USDT in 30 days, according to our earlier reporting. The design limit that binds all of this stays in place regardless of demand: crypto cannot pay for goods and services inside Russia, so the venue serves investment balances only.