Odaily Planet Daily News The Central Bank of Russia stated that it is winning the fight against peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptocurrency exchanges, with its "fight against the illegal circulation of cryptocurrency in Russia" proving to be "successful." Compared to data from 2023, the number of high-risk P2P transactions in the country has "decreased by 2.8 times." This claim was made in its latest financial stability assessment, which focused on economic performance in the second and third quarters of fiscal year 2024. The Central Bank of Russia stated that it has been working with commercial banks nationwide since the beginning of this year. Regulators and banks reported that they have jointly blocked dozens of transactions related to P2P trading platforms. It is understood that Russia's cryptocurrency trading market remains unregulated. Although Moscow introduced several laws targeting cryptocurrencies in the second half of 2024, none of them addressed issues related to exchanges. The exchange market is also highly fragmented, filled with underground participants and companies that claim to facilitate cash transfers across borders using cryptocurrency. As a result, the P2P market has expanded significantly. In June 2023, a cybersecurity platform stated that Russian traders could conduct trades worth about "296 million USD" daily. The Central Bank of Russia reported that underground cryptocurrency exchanges and P2P operators "generally settle using payment cards or accounts issued to fictitious individuals," making the crackdown on such schemes a top priority, and it is now "maintaining ongoing cooperation" with credit institutions and providing assistance to banks in blocking transfers. Additionally, global cryptocurrency platform website traffic from Russian IP addresses increased by 56.5%, reaching 166.9 million visits. Russian visitors currently account for 7.5% of all visitors to major global cryptocurrency trading platforms, an increase of 1.3% since the last data release. The bank also noted that in the third quarter of 2024, the "estimated balance of cryptocurrency wallets held by Russians" (in exchanges) decreased by 16% compared to March, with Russians holding about 6.1 billion USD in these wallets, of which 69% is Bitcoin, while the remaining tokens are Ethereum (21%) and stablecoins (10%). (RBC)

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