Thu 13 Aug 2026

Russia's Sberbank announced crypto custody for 100 million retail customers by December 2026, but the wallet architecture is custodial — Sberbank holds all private keys on its own infrastructure. Under the Yarovaya Law (Federal Law No. 374-FZ), the FSB has legal authority to demand access to any data held by Sberbank, including transaction records, balances, and encryption keys, without a court order. A "crypto wallet" where a state-owned bank holds the keys and the security service has warrantless access is functionally a surveillance instrument with a cryptographic interface. The boundary between custodial and self-custodied assets is not ideological — it is the exact technical line between assets a state can see and seize and assets it cannot.

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