Is crypto legal in Nigeria? Rules & regulation (2026)

Nigeria's SEC imposed new minimum capital thresholds, ₦2 billion for exchanges and custodians, ₦1 billion for tokenisers, with a compliance deadline of 30 June 2027. The move consolidates the ISA 2025 framework and aims to weed out undercapitalised operators before full licensing rolls out.

President Bola Tinubu signed the ISA 2025 into law, replacing the outdated 2007 Act and explicitly defining digital assets as securities under SEC jurisdiction. The law closes the long-standing regulatory vacuum by imposing licensing, AML compliance, capital adequacy, and cybersecurity requirements on exchanges, custodians, wallet providers, and tokenisers.

Binance's head of financial crime compliance was freed after money-laundering charges were dropped, having suffered malaria, pneumonia, and a herniated disc during detention. The case drew widespread international condemnation and became a cautionary marker of Nigeria's willingness to use executive detention as a tool of crypto enforcement.

Under its newly launched Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme (ARIP), the SEC issued provisional Digital Asset Exchange licences to Quidax and Busha, the first crypto platforms formally authorised to operate in Nigeria. The grants demonstrated that the post-2021 hard-line stance had genuinely reversed.

Nigeria's SEC opened a sandbox-style ARIP pathway allowing crypto startups to obtain provisional licences and operate under supervised conditions pending full licensing. The programme signalled an official pivot from the 2021 prohibition era toward structured regulatory engagement with the industry.

Nigerian telecoms were ordered to block access to major crypto exchanges amid government allegations that Binance's P2P naira market manipulated the exchange rate and facilitated over $26 billion in untraceable flows in 2023. One week later, on 28 February, Nigerian authorities detained Binance executives Tigran Gambaryan and Nadeem Anjarwalla, who had flown to Abuja for negotiations, and charged them with money laundering and tax evasion.

The Central Bank of Nigeria issued Guideline FPR/DIR/PUB/CIR/002/003, allowing banks to open Designated Settlement Accounts for crypto firms that hold a valid SEC licence. This reversed the February 2021 prohibition, though banks remained barred from directly holding or trading digital assets on their own account.

Nigeria's SEC issued its Rules on Issuance, Offering Platforms and Custody of Digital Assets, creating five regulated categories (issuers, offering platforms, custodians, VASPs, and exchanges) with mandatory whitepapers, fit-and-proper tests, and minimum paid-up capital of ₦500 million for offering platforms. It was the first systematic capital-markets framework for crypto in Nigeria and existed in tension with the concurrent CBN banking ban.

President Buhari launched the eNaira CBDC, making Nigeria the second country globally (after the Bahamas) to offer a public CBDC and the first in Africa. Despite aiming to boost financial inclusion and remittances, fewer than 0.5% of Nigerians had used the eNaira within a year of launch.

The CBN sent a letter to all deposit money banks and financial institutions prohibiting them from processing payments for crypto exchanges and directing them to close any accounts linked to cryptocurrency transactions or exchange operations. This effectively cut off banking rails for the Nigerian crypto industry and drove trading underground into peer-to-peer channels.

Nigeria's SEC issued a policy statement recognising virtual and digital assets as securities, adopting recommendations from its Fintech Roadmap Committee. The move created an immediate regulatory contradiction with the CBN's cautious stance and set the stage for years of inter-agency tension.

The CBN issued Circular FPR/DIR/GEN/CIR/06/010 warning banks and financial institutions of AML/CFT risks in virtual currencies, directing them to implement monitoring controls and file suspicious transaction reports for any customer engaged in crypto activities. The circular stopped short of a ban but established the CBN's foundational posture of caution toward digital assets.