Crypto & Digital Assets · Mauritania
Is crypto legal in Mauritania? Regulation & rules (2026)
Mauritania shaded by its crypto & digital assets status
Mauritania has not enacted any specific legislation governing cryptocurrency or digital assets, leaving the sector in a legal grey zone — neither explicitly authorised nor formally banned. The BCM, the sole financial regulatory authority, issued no licensing or supervisory regime for virtual-asset service providers. The only concrete official action in the digital-asset space is the BCM's April 2024 commission of Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) to design specifications and conduct preliminary testing for a potential central bank digital currency (digital Ouguiya), a project that remains exploratory.
Key points
Mauritania has enacted no statute, decree, or regulation that defines, permits, or prohibits cryptocurrencies or virtual assets. The country's general commercial and financial laws contain no provisions referencing Bitcoin, stablecoins, or token offerings.
In April 2024, at the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings, the BCM formally commissioned G+D to develop specifications for a digital Ouguiya and provide technical solutions for preliminary testing, framing it as part of Mauritania's national digital-transformation strategy. No launch timeline has been announced.
The BCM has not established any licensing, registration, or supervisory framework for cryptocurrency exchanges or virtual-asset service providers operating in or from Mauritania.
Mauritania is a member of the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force (MENAFATF). FATF's 2024–2025 targeted updates note that MENAFATF-region jurisdictions frequently adopt partial or prohibitory approaches to VASPs, and that many members have yet to implement Recommendation 15 requirements on virtual assets.
Mauritania's Ministry of Finance has published Finance Law circulars (including for 2025) that contain no specific provisions on crypto-asset taxation; no capital-gains or income-tax rules specific to digital assets have been gazetted.
The G+D partnership is explicitly scoped to a sovereign digital currency as a complement to cash, not to regulating private virtual assets. The BCM has not used the CBDC initiative as a vehicle to introduce broader virtual-asset oversight.
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Last verified 5/25/2026 · Orientation, not legal advice - verify against the primary sources linked above. Explore the full world map →