RUSSIA’S BIGGEST BANK WILL LEND AGAINST YOUR BITCOIN — SBER EXPANDS CRYPTO COLLATERAL LOANS, BUT ORDINARY RUSSIANS ARE CAPPED AT 300,000 RUBLES A YEAR

Sber is Russia’s largest bank, majority-owned by the state, and it just told TASS it plans to take bitcoin, ether, and tether as collateral for loans once the country’s new crypto law fully kicks in on September 1. Deputy Chairman Anatoly Popov called it adapting “existing products to the new requirements,” which is banker for: we already did this quietly and now we’re doing it in the open. The pilot ran in December 2025, a crypto-backed loan to Intelion, a mining company, terms undisclosed. That’s the balance-sheet read here — a state bank treating a censorship-resistant asset as bankable collateral, filed, tested, and repeatable. But read the fine print before calling this a retail bitcoin bank. Ordinary Russians who aren’t “qualified investors” are capped at 300,000 rubles a year, funneled through an intermediary, after passing a test. The real product isn’t citizen access. It’s state-approved custody rails for institutions — miners, businesses, funds — sitting on digital assets Moscow now wants inside a system it can license, tax, and watch. Owning bitcoin as pledged collateral inside a government-majority bank is not the same as owning bitcoin. The coin still moves outside their ledger. The loan against it does not.