Russian crypto market explodes: Europe’s largest market position established, user inquiries surge

【Blockchain Rhythm】The enthusiasm of the Russian public for cryptocurrencies continues to soar. Recent publicly available data shows that in January 2025, cryptocurrency-related inquiries became the hottest topic among non-standard questions handled by the social fund’s customer service calls. Users generally care about two things: whether they can receive pensions in cryptocurrency and whether mining income will affect social welfare applications.

The official stance is very clear — pensions and social payments can currently only be settled in rubles, and crypto assets are completely outside the jurisdiction of the social fund. As for mining income and tax-related matters, that is the responsibility of the Federal Tax Service of Russia. Although policies currently do not support using digital assets to receive benefits, this does not prevent Russia from becoming Europe’s largest crypto market.

According to Chainalysis data, Russia has surpassed the UK and Germany to take the top spot in Europe’s crypto market. From July 2024 to June 2025, Russia received a total of $376.3 billion in crypto inflows, a year-over-year increase of 48%. In comparison, the UK received only $273.2 billion during the same period. Even more impressive are large transfers, which grew at a rate of 86%. The activity in the DeFi ecosystem is also skyrocketing — DeFi activity in 2025 increased eightfold year-over-year, fully demonstrating how high Russian users’ enthusiasm for Web3 is.