What happened
SberCIB, the corporate and investment banking arm of Sberbank, put a number on something Russian policymakers have been circling for two years. In a forecast reported by Crypto. News on Monday, the bank pegged first-year regulated crypto trading volume at $46.
43 billion, with the market scaling to $87. 06 billion by 2029. That's a base case, not a ceiling.
SberCIB frames the estimate around a legalized domestic framework, meaning licensed venues, KYC, and a supervisor - almost certainly the Bank of Russia - sitting on top. The bank did not publish a bear case in the excerpt, and it did not name which venues would clear the bar. The forecast lands into a policy environment that has moved in fits and starts.
Moscow legalized industrial crypto mining in late 2024, then spent 2025 debating whether Russians should be allowed to trade at all. A $46 billion year-one print would put Russia in the same weight class as mid-tier regulated markets in Asia.
Why it matters
$46 billion is not a rounding error. For context, it's roughly the annualized spot volume some mid-sized centralized exchanges clear in a strong quarter. If SberCIB's number is even directionally right, a licensed Russian venue becomes a top-20 flow source overnight.
There's a second layer. Russian retail and corporate demand has been routed through offshore exchanges, OTC desks, and P2P rails since the 2022 sanctions wave. A domestic framework pulls that flow onshore, gives the Bank of Russia visibility it currently doesn't have, and hands Sberbank - which has been building crypto infrastructure inside its DFA (digital financial assets) platform - a natural distribution channel.