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Foreign cryptocurrency exchanges have shown interest in the efforts to bring the Russian market "out of the shadows", Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov said on March 25 at the AKRA forum.

“We are also seeing interest from foreigners, including infrastructure providers and exchanges. They are interested in the market being ‘brought out of the shadow,’ and some have even expressed a willingness to potentially enter our market,” Chebeskov said, according to Interfax.

The government will soon submit a package of bills to legalize the cryptocurrency market to the State Duma, the deputy minister said.

In late 2025, the Bank of Russia outlined a framework for regulating the cryptocurrency market under which cryptocurrency transactions would be permitted via existing infrastructure such as exchanges and brokers.

Foreign cryptocurrency exchanges and trading platforms seeking to operating in Russia would be required to do so through locally registered subsidiaries, earlier said Ekaterina Lozgacheva, head of the Central Bank’s financial market strategic development department.

Large global exchanges, such as Binance or HTX, are unlikely to establish an official presence in Russia. partly due to the risk of secondary sanctions, analysts surveyed by RBC Crypto agree. Given the requirement to operate via subsidiaries, major global players are unlikely to commit resources to formally establish their operations in Russia, Dmitry Machikhin, founder of BitOK, said.