Russian State Duma Financial Committee Rejects Multiple Cryptocurrency Regulatory Loosening Amendments, Bill Second Reading Postponed to September

According to Bits.media, the Russian State Duma Committee on the Financial Market has recommended rejecting several loosening amendments to the government's cryptocurrency regulation bill, which is currently prepared for its second reading. The rejected amendments mainly include: increasing the annual limit for non-professional investors purchasing cryptocurrency through a single intermediary from 300,000 rubles to 600,000 rubles; expanding the scope of tradable cryptocurrencies to coins with a market cap exceeding 1 trillion rubles and average daily trading volume exceeding 100 billion rubles (the current draft requires a market cap of no less than 5 trillion rubles and trading volume of no less than 1 trillion rubles, effectively allowing only a very small number of coins such as BTC and ETH to be listed); allowing Russian citizens to use non-custodial crypto wallets; canceling the mandatory review power of digital custodians over every transaction; and postponing the bill's effective date to January 2027. The current version of the bill retains the power of digital custodians to review every transaction and freeze transactions. The bill completed its first reading in April this year and was originally planned to be passed before July 1, but has now been postponed to September 1, with the deliberation of the supporting criminal liability bill also scheduled no earlier than September.