Russia says firms are using Bitcoin in foreign trade

Russia’s finance minister said on December 25, 2024, that companies had begun using Bitcoin and other digital currencies in international payments under the country’s experimental legal regime. The statement was an important shift from discussing cryptocurrency-based trade as a future possibility to claiming that transactions were already occurring.

Anton Siluanov made the comments in an interview carried by the state-owned Russia-24 television channel. Reuters reported the same day that he described domestically mined bitcoins as eligible for foreign-trade transactions and said this activity should expand. The surviving public record does not identify participating companies, counterparties, transaction values, wallet addresses or the goods being settled.

That distinction is essential: the verified development is that a senior Russian official publicly confirmed operational use. The available evidence does not independently establish the scale or commercial significance of that use.

The legal route into foreign trade

The statement followed a regulatory change enacted months earlier. Federal Law No. 223-FZ, signed on August 8, 2024, authorized the Bank of Russia to establish experimental legal regimes for digital-currency transactions connected to foreign trade. The law took effect on September 1, 2024.

The Bank of Russia explained on July 30, 2024, that exporters and importers would be permitted to use cryptocurrencies in cross-border settlements under foreign-trade contracts only through the experimental regime. The central bank was responsible for approving the program in coordination with other state bodies, while participation and duration could be limited.

The framework was therefore not a general decision to make Bitcoin legal tender or an unrestricted domestic payment instrument. It created a controlled exception for approved cross-border activity. On December 20, 2024, Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina reiterated the institution’s opposition to cryptocurrency payments inside Russia while supporting cryptocurrency projects for cross-border settlements.

Why the announcement mattered

Russia had a direct institutional reason to test alternative settlement rails. Western sanctions and heightened compliance risks had made Russia-related international bank payments more difficult, including transactions involving major trading partners. Cryptocurrency could move value without relying on the same correspondent-banking chain, although recipients would still face their own legal, custody, liquidity and sanctions-compliance obligations.

Siluanov’s acknowledgment mattered beyond Russia because it placed Bitcoin inside a sovereign foreign-trade experiment rather than only a retail, investment or mining narrative. It also illustrated the tension between Bitcoin’s open settlement network and the regulated gateways through which companies acquire it, account for it and convert it into national currencies.

That does not mean cryptocurrency eliminated sanctions exposure. Wallet screening, exchange controls, counterparty rules and enforcement against facilitators could still constrain a transaction. Nor did Russian authorization require a foreign supplier, its bank or its home regulator to accept the arrangement.

What the record cannot prove

No transaction-level evidence accompanied the December 25 announcement. The public sources reviewed for this reconstruction disclose no volume, frequency, exchange rate, settlement duration or comparison with Russia’s conventional trade flows. They also do not establish whether Bitcoin was transferred directly between trading companies or passed through intermediaries.

For that reason, the development should not be read as evidence of broad Bitcoin adoption, a measurable change in network demand or a cause of any market-price movement. No price claim is included because a continuously traded asset lacks a single universal daily price, and the available event record does not establish causation between the interview and trading activity.

The defensible event-day conclusion is narrower but still consequential: by December 25, 2024, Russia’s finance minister was publicly describing cryptocurrency foreign-trade payments as active under a recently created legal experiment. The operational scale remained undisclosed.