Buying DFAs: a registered operator, investor status and the issue decision

Digital financial assets (DFAs) are bought not in an exchange order book but in the information system of the operator where the asset is issued and recorded. The route consists of checks, and their order matters: find the operator in the Bank of Russia register, work out which access category the issue falls into given your investor status, read the issue decision and, separately, check the party that owes the money under it. The amount you can invest depends on your status and on how the payout is structured, not on what the buyer wants.

What DFAs are in law and who issues them is covered in the article on digital financial assets. Here we deal only with the sequence of actions and what is checked at each step. A caveat straight away: there are no DFA issues in TradeAlmanac. We cover bonds, and they can be used to check an issuer that also borrows through DFAs — a separate section below is devoted to this.

Look for the operator in the regulator's register, not in advertising

The basis of regulation is Federal Law No. 259-FZ of 31 July 2020. Under it, DFAs are issued through an information system operator, while secondary-market trades go through a DFA exchange operator. Both kinds of operator are entered in Bank of Russia registers, and the regulator publishes these registers on its website. Hence the first check: the organisation on whose platform you are offered an issue must be found in the register. We deliberately do not name a single platform — only the regulator has the current list.

Choosing an operator is at the same time choosing a set of issues. An asset lives inside the platform where it was issued: it cannot be moved to another operator the way a security is moved between depositories. So the question of "where to buy" is settled not by how convenient a platform is but by which operator hosts the issue you need. How a user gains access, which documents they submit and how they deposit money is determined by the rules of the specific operator; these must be read in the version currently in force.

The category of the issue decides what amount is available

Access to DFAs is set by Bank of Russia Directive No. 7176-U of 23 September 2025. It has been in force since 1 January 2026 and replaced Directive No. 5635-U of 25 November 2020. It divides issues according to how the payout is structured:

• the payout does not depend on variable indicators and the issuer has a high credit rating — a non-qualified investor buys with no limit on the amount. Which rating levels are considered sufficient is set by the Bank of Russia's board of directors;
• the income depends on inflation, the key rate, the price of a precious metal or of a share — such assets are available to a non-qualified investor within RUB 600,000 per year. When the asset is redeemed or sold, the limit is restored;
• the remaining issues are for qualified investors only.

This division dictates the order of actions: first open the issue decision and understand what the payout depends on, and only then work out the amount. The limit is annual and is restored when the asset is redeemed or sold; how it is calculated at the turn of the year and for issues longer than a year is determined by the text of Directive No. 7176-U, and it is the version in force that must be checked.

The asset threshold for a qualified investor is RUB 24m. How the status is granted and what it changes is described in the glossary: qualified investor.

The issue decision: the questions it has to answer

DFAs have no prospectus, and the issuer does not disclose information under securities-market rules. The terms are set out in the issue decision, which is published on the operator's website. The issue card on the platform is a paraphrase; you have to read the document itself. These are the questions to look for answers to in it.

Who is the obligor. The full legal name of the issuer, not the name of the product. The credit risk of a DFA is the same as that of a bond: it is an obligation of a specific entity, not of the operator that keeps the record of the asset.

What right is certified. The law allows a monetary claim, rights under issue-grade securities and a stake in the capital of a non-public joint-stock company. Assets that differ in substance end up under one name, and the answer determines what exactly you will receive at the end of the term.

What the payout depends on. It is either fixed in advance or tied to a variable indicator. This same point determines the access category from the previous section.

When and how the obligation is performed. The term, the redemption procedure, the consequences of late payment. If the text does not answer one of these questions, there are no grounds for assuming the answer is favourable.

What backs the promise. Whether there is collateral or a guarantee, and whose exactly.

Whether you can exit before maturity. Whether a buyback by the issuer is provided for and whether the issue trades with an exchange operator.

How the structure of a DFA differs from that of a bond — record-keeping, disclosure, protection of the holder — is compared in the article on DFAs and bonds.

The debtor is checked through its bonds

The issue decision describes the terms but does not say how the debtor pays its other debts. If the same issuer borrows in the bond market, it makes disclosures on those securities, and traces remain. Here is what you can look at on our site:

• in the bond section — whether the issuer has issues in circulation and what yield the market demands on them;
• in the feed of defaults and technical defaults — whether it has missed payments on its bonds. A technical default on a bond matters to a DFA holder too: it is the same entity that has to pay on both obligations;
• in the corporate events calendar — which coupons, redemptions, put offers and financial-statement releases are scheduled for the near future.

The credit rating is a separate check, all the more so because the access category depends on it. What it assesses and why it does not serve as a guarantee is covered in the article on ratings and credit risk.

If the issuer has neither bonds nor a rating, there is nothing to check it against other than the issue decision itself — and that, too, is a result of the check. What can go wrong after the purchase is gathered in the article on DFA risks.

The trade, the tax and the exit: what to find out before paying

An asset can be bought at placement — through the information system operator — or later, through an exchange operator. DFAs have no familiar exchange order book, so before buying you find out how a sale before maturity works for this issue: the secondary market for DFAs does not extend beyond its own platform.

Tax on DFAs is calculated on a separate tax base. The tax agent is the information system operator or the exchange operator — whichever the payout went through. Investment deductions do not apply to DFAs, and a loss is not offset against a profit on securities. All of this follows from one provision — Article 214.11 of the Russian Tax Code, which has been in force since 2023 and separates transactions in digital rights from the general procedure. The calculation and the rates are in the article on DFA taxation.

When this procedure stops being correct and who it does not suit

The rules change. Federal Law No. 282-FZ of 4 August 2026 "On Digital Currencies and Digital Rights" introduces new regulation of digital rights and replaces Law No. 259-FZ in stages. The transition is phased, so the version in force of both the law and the access directive must be checked as of the purchase date. The provisions in this text were verified as of 6 October 2026.

The annual limit and the rating levels are set by the regulator, and they are checked as of the purchase date: the limit determines the amount available, and the rating levels determine which issues are open with no limit on the amount.

The bond check works only for issuers that have bonds. For the rest it yields nothing, and in that case the absence of entries in the default feed says nothing about reliability.

The route described does not suit someone who may need the money before maturity: the asset can neither be transferred to another operator nor sold in an exchange order book. Nor does it suit someone who was counting on a deduction through an individual investment account or on the long-term holding relief — these do not extend to DFAs. Nor someone who is not prepared to read the issue decision in full: the buyer has no other source of the terms.