From November 17, non-qualified investors in Russia will be able to buy bitcoin, ether and USDT legally for the first time. Purchases go through brokers, asset managers and licensed exchangers, capped at 300,000 rubles a year per intermediary. Most of the debate has been about whether that limit is too high or too low. Professional managers of private capital tend to ask a different question, says Danila Ladnyuk, founder of Family Office D1 Capital.

"In a family office we never discuss whether to buy bitcoin," Ladnyuk says. Instead, D1 Capital decides how much of a family's capital can go into high-risk assets and what goes there. Crypto is one position in that bucket, next to venture deals and pre-IPO stakes, and it is judged by the same rules as everything else.

The share matters more than the sum

On its own, 300,000 rubles says little. What matters is the share of a particular person's capital it represents.

With bitcoin at around $74,000–76,000, the limit buys roughly 0.05 BTC. For someone with 1 million rubles in savings, that is 30% of the portfolio, far too much for an asset that has lost about a quarter of its value over the year and is almost 40% below its October 2025 record.

With 5 million rubles, the same amount is 6%, close to the upper bound of what is usually considered sensible for a single high-risk instrument. With 30 million, it is 1% and barely moves the overall result.

This explains the fixed amount. It stops retail investors from putting too large a part of their savings into crypto rather than restricting the market as such. Qualified investors face no limit, which is consistent: at their level of capital such sums stop being a noticeable share.

Where crypto sits in a portfolio

D1 Capital usually starts from a four-part structure. About 40% is the protective part, meant to preserve money rather than grow it: deposits, bonds of reliable issuers, money market funds. With the Bank of Russia's key rate at 14%, this part currently delivers double-digit ruble returns without meaningful risk.

About 30% is the investment part: stocks, funds, corporate bonds and real estate, with moderate risk and a horizon of at least three years. About 15% is the high-risk part: venture, pre-IPO, crypto and early-stage deals. The rule here is strict: if this money disappears entirely, the family should live as before and keep its plans. The remaining 15% or so is liquidity, a reserve for unexpected costs and for moving quickly into a good deal.

Proportions differ from client to client, but the logic does not. Crypto shares the high-risk part with venture and other speculative positions. If a client has 20 million rubles and 15% goes to high risk, that is 3 million for all such positions together, and crypto gets only a portion of it.