Russia’s deputy finance minister said approximately 20 million residents hold crypto assets worth nearly $44 billion, but the estimate has no published methodology, asset breakdown, reference date or independent verification. An earlier account identified the official as Ivan Chebeskov and valued the holdings at about 3.7 trillion rubles. Russia ranks 16th in Chainalysis’s latest crypto adoption index, with digital assets used for foreign-trade settlements, mining, speculative trading and savings through foreign exchanges. Stablecoins are suited to cross-border transactions because they avoid the volatility associated with other crypto assets, while Russia’s mining sector ranks second worldwide by hashrate behind the United States. The government is developing rules to license domestic exchanges and allow qualified and non-qualified investors to trade through regulated venues, while continuing to prohibit crypto for everyday domestic payments and promoting the state-supervised digital ruble. The estimate’s unresolved definitions, including which assets and holdings it covers, leave its scale uncertain; an official dataset or methodology would clarify how the figures were compiled.