Digital currency
A digital code in an information system that is accepted as a means of payment or a store of value but has no obligor: nobody promises to redeem or exchange it. This is how Russian law describes cryptocurrencies.
A digital currency is a set of electronic data (a digital code or designation) in an information system that is offered for use as a means of payment or as a store of value, while no participant in the system is liable to the holder of that data. The absence of an obligor is precisely the defining feature. Behind the rouble stand the central bank and the settlement infrastructure; behind a bond stands an issuer with an obligation to redeem it; behind a digital currency there are only the rules of the system itself and the willingness of other participants to accept it in exchange.
How it works
Ownership records are kept not in a single central ledger but in a distributed ledger: copies of the database are held by many nodes, and a new entry is recognised as valid if the network has confirmed it under the built-in algorithm. The balance can be disposed of by whoever holds the cryptographic key — the transfer of rights requires no intermediary and is not recorded by a depository entry.
The rest of the structure follows from the absence of an obligor. There is no put offer and no redemption: there is nobody to present the code to. Nor is there an official rate that anyone is obliged to maintain — the price is formed solely by matching orders on trading venues, so an exchange rate in the usual sense is not defined here. Russian regulation is built not around the issuer, which does not exist, but around the intermediary and the admission of the buyer: the annual limit on purchases of digital currency by a non-qualified investor through a single intermediary is RUB 300,000. The threshold is addressed specifically to the non-qualified buyer — hence the role of qualified investor status in gaining access to such instruments.
What the platform shows
The platform reflects the size of the digital currency market through market capitalisation — the number of units issued multiplied by the current price:
| # | Security | Value |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | BTCBitcoin | 1,667.57 bn USD |
| 2 | ETHEthereum | 306.42 bn USD |
| 3 | USDTTether | 184.09 bn USD |
As of trading date: 10/10/2026
This is not an analogue of a company's market capitalisation: that figure is backed by assets and revenue, whereas here there is only the price of the last trade multiplied by the number of entries in the ledger.
Where the term is misunderstood
The main confusion is equating digital currency with the digital rouble. The digital rouble is an obligation of the central bank, which is exactly the construct that a digital currency by definition does not have. The second confusion is mixing it up with digital financial assets: there, issuance takes place in a system that has an obligor and an information system operator that maintains the ledger and is responsible for its operation.
The third misconception is reading the word "currency" literally. Its name does not make a digital currency the settlement currency of an exchange trade; it does not take part in the foreign-exchange revaluation of a brokerage portfolio and is not part of the exchange's currency section. In a regime that requires an obligation to be performed in money, the term is meaningless: nobody bears an obligation behind a digital currency.