Nigeria is taking a front-door approach to regulating virtual assets.
For years, the country’s crypto economy operated through a mix of offshore exchanges, peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, informal payment rails, and loosely supervised infrastructure.
Regulators are now trying to pull that activity into the formal financial system without repeating the blunt restrictions that characterised earlier attempts to control the sector.
Nigeria is prioritising two things in its regulatory approach: taxation and transaction monitoring. This aligns, in part, with the global Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), to which Nigeria has committed to implementing from 2028.
These capabilities could help the government monitor crypto-related activity, reduce risks associated with illicit financial flows and tax non-compliance, and bring more of the virtual-asset economy into the formal regulatory system. But creating a broad regulatory architecture also raises the risk of overlapping oversight if the responsibilities of individual agencies are not clearly defined.
The monitoring component is gaining more teeth. In its Payments System Vision 2028 (PSV 2028) released on June 1, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) proposed allowing the bank to operate observer nodes in blockchain infrastructure supporting approved stablecoins.
The proposal fits into the country’s broader direction of travel: Nigeria is not trying to eliminate crypto activity; it is trying to increase its visibility and bring significant virtual-asset activity touching the Nigerian economy within a framework of reporting, supervision and taxation.