Moscow Exchange Sets Hours for Its Planned Crypto Trading Pilot

Moscow Exchange plans a Dec. 1 cryptocurrency trading pilot that would add trading in underlying digital assets to its existing crypto-index futures business.

At the Smart-Lab investment conference Oct. 31, Moscow Exchange Senior Managing Director Boris Blokhin said the session would run from 10:50 p.m. ET Nov. 30 to 3:50 p.m. ET Dec. 1 (03:50–20:50 UTC Dec. 1). The planned initial assets are Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and USD Tether (USDT).

The platform would match orders through an electronic order book. Moscow Exchange plans to use its existing stock-market infrastructure to limit added costs for brokers. Blokhin said enough firms were testing the system for the pilot, while others could join as their systems became ready. He described the schedule as using the maximum time available on the stock-market section.

“We will provide digital currency market participants with the ability to conduct swap operations as a liquidity-management tool,” Blokhin said. Clients would trade through professional market participants; partner digital depositories would hold the assets and maintain records.

The exchange already offers futures tied to indexes for Bitcoin, Ether, Solana (SOL), XRP and Tron (TRX). Those contracts settle in cash rather than delivering the underlying assets and are available to qualified investors. More than 72,000 qualified investors had traded them as of Sept. 16, 2026; the first such contracts launched in summer 2025. The new schedule and trading details build on the exchange’s earlier testing ahead of the planned launch.

Retail access depends on rules that were still pending. The Bank of Russia’s draft Directive No. 7441-U would list Bitcoin, Ether and USDT for public trading and cap nonqualified investors’ annual crypto purchases through a broker. It remained under state registration as of Nov. 1, 2026. Russia’s crypto law took effect Sept. 1, 2026, permitting crypto transactions through intermediaries while prohibiting cryptocurrency payments within the country. The pilot is planned to begin Dec. 1, 2026.