Moscow Exchange Debuts Bitcoin Futures—Racks Up $5M Volume on Day One

Russia's financial establishment dips a cautious toe into crypto waters—with predictable Wall Street-style fanfare.

Trading desks wake up:
The Moscow Exchange's new Bitcoin futures product saw $5 million change hands in its first 24 hours. Not quite CME-scale liquidity, but a start.

Geopolitical subtext:
Sanctions? What sanctions? The launch signals Moscow's quiet embrace of crypto infrastructure while publicly decrying 'Western financial instruments.'

The cynical take:
Another derivatives product for institutional gamblers to overleverage—because spot markets are just too honest for modern finance.

Moscow Exchange releases first Bitcoin futures trading stats

The volume of Bitcoin futures traded on Moscow Exchange exceeded 420 million rubles (over $5.3 million) at the end of June 4, the day the new product was offered to investors, a representative of the platform’s operator announced.

Nearly 8,600 transactions were carried out and the number of clients involved in the trading reached 4,137, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported, quoting Maria Patrikeeva, managing director of the Moscow Exchange Derivatives Market.

The executive emphasized that the leading Russian exchange intends to develop the new segment in accordance with customer requests and elaborated:

“90% of the turnover on the futures market comes from qualified investors. Therefore, the launch of futures on shares of the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF investment fund — an instrument available exclusively to this category of investors — was a logical and timely step in the development of our line.”

The Moscow Exchange (MOEX) started trading futures contracts for the shares of BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF (IBIT) on Wednesday. The value is expressed in U.S. dollars per lot, and settlements are made in Russian rubles. The contracts will expire in September.

The trading platform revealed it’s going to launch the product right after the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) said it’s authorizing the offering of crypto derivatives in the country. The regulator did that while warning both financial firms and their clients against direct investments in cryptocurrencies.

The iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, managed by the American investment firm BlackRock, is one of the largest Bitcoin ETFs, or exchange-traded funds allowing investors to gain exposure to the price changes of BTC without directly holding the crypto. The fund has $70 billion in assets.

Legalization opens crypto derivatives market for Russian investors

Following the CBR’s announcement, Russia’s largest credit institution, majority state-owned Sberbank, launched structured bonds tied to the value of Bitcoin, which were also listed on MOEX. Another government-controlled bank, VTB, said it will offer the bonds to its clients.

Sergey Selyutin, head of trading operations at the bank’s “VTB My Investments” arm, commented that the trading results from the Moscow Exchange indicate that Russian investors are looking for ways to diversify their portfolios and are ready to work with new assets.

Currently, cryptocurrency derivatives are only available to “highly qualified” investors as the Bank of Russia favors restricting access to volatile assets and products based on them. The regulator has been a strong opponent to legalizing the free circulation of cryptocurrencies in the Russian economy.

To be treated as qualified investors, private individuals should prove annual income of at least 50 million rubles (over $633,000) and investments in securities or deposits exceeding 100 million rubles (almost $1.27 million), the CBR suggested earlier this year.

This week, the monetary authority proposed to raise the limit for non-qualified investors who want to buy digital financial assets (DFAs) from the current 600,000 rubles to 1 million rubles (around $12,500). Under Russian DFA law, the category includes various tokenized assets and rights, other than crypto.

The CBR’s regulatory nod sparked a race between financial and banking institutions in Russia to tap into the domestic crypto derivatives market. One of the companies competing for a share, the Russian broker Finam, said it will launch products based on the most popular coins, including BTC and ETH.

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