Russia has put forward a bill to treat cryptocurrencies bought during marriage as joint property. The goal is to give judges and lawyers a clear rule for dividing assets in divorce and the change would touch investors, compliance staff and divorce lawyers.
Deputy Igor Antropenko wrote the draft and sent it to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina for comment. A cryptocurrency is simply computer money — a digital entry on a public ledger that shows who owns it and lets the owner send it to anyone without a bank.
The draft would rewrite two articles of the Russian Family Code. Under the new wording, coins bought after the wedding would belong to both spouses, while coins owned before the wedding or received as a gift or inheritance would stay with the original holder, and the note attached to the bill explains this split.
Lawmaker arguments cite the scale of Russian crypto activity, saying Russians moved about 376 billion dollars’ worth of crypto between July 2024 and June 2025. Since 2021, Federal Law 259-FZ has treated some digital assets as property, but the Family Code never spelled out what happens in a divorce. Russia already taxes crypto profits at 13–15% — the tax side is in place — and the drafters now want the family law side to catch up.
Enforcement challenges and risks
Lawyers warn the plan will stall without extra rules. Andrey Tugarin, who founded GMT Legal, calls the bill “useless” unless the state builds tools to find and track coins. He guesses that ten more laws or orders would be required before a judge could force a husband or wife to hand over half of a wallet, and at the moment no law forces exchanges to share customer data, so a spouse can still hide assets fairly easily.
The bill gives a clear label — coins bought during the marriage are joint — but real cases face three roadblocks: price swings make it hard to fix a fair value; a stubborn partner can move coins to a secret address; and banks, exchanges and wallets do not yet swap information with courts or with each other. That clarity should help protect each spouse when the marriage ends, yet enforcement remains the weak link.
The bill now sits with the Government and the Central Bank. Experts doubt that all the tracing rules will be ready before 2027. Custody services, compliance teams and divorce lawyers should start checking wallet audits, custody policies or KYC/AML files now, because courts will one day demand proof of who owns which coins.
