Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed new rules that would allow it to approve new digital and virtual asset operators, set governance requirements, and gain deeper visibility into transactions, wallets, and the movement of digital assets in and out of the country.
The proposed rules, issued on Thursday, would mandate cryptocurrency businesses targeting Nigerian users to register with the SEC, even if they operate from outside the country. The rules cover exchanges, custodians, and virtual asset service providers (VASPs), as well as tokenisation and digital-asset offering platforms.
It marks a significant expansion of the SEC’s approach to regulating crypto in Nigeria, shifting the focus from simply bringing virtual asset businesses into its sandbox framework to issuing operating rules to closely supervise how they operate, move customer assets, and interact with the wider financial system. The proposal underscores one of the key areas where Nigeria’s virtual asset regulation lies: transaction monitoring.
Several virtual asset businesses now face re-enforced costs of operating in the digital asset sector. Exchanges and digital asset custodians would each need ₦2 billion ($1.5 million) in minimum capital, while VASPs would require ₦200 million ($148,400).
Digital asset platform operators (DAPOs) such as token issuers, digital asset offering platforms (DAOPs)—including companies that provide platforms for token issuance—and real-world asset tokenisation platforms (RATOPs) must all maintain minimum capital requirements of ₦500 million ($371,000).
Notably, ancillary virtual asset providers (AVASPs), which provide technological infrastructure for virtual asset businesses, are no longer included in the proposed rules. The category previously carried a minimum capital requirement of ₦300 million ($222,600) under the SEC’s revised guidelines issued in March.
Digital asset exchanges would pay a ₦30 million ($22,270) registration fee, while VASPs would pay ₦15 million ($11,130). But the bigger change may be how much information crypto companies would have to make available to the regulator.
The SEC could require regulated firms to provide application programming interface (API)-based or other electronic access to operational, transactional, financial, wallet, custody, and settlement data.