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Nigeria licenses digital-asset issuance, offering platforms, custody, VASPs and exchanges under SEC's May 2022 Rules (CLM-NG-001), with an incubation track (ARIP) permitting limited operation via Approval-in-Principle pending full commencement (CLM-NG-002); Busha and Quidax became the first ARIP-licensed exchanges as of August 2024, holding provisional rather than full registration (CLM-NG-003). CBN's December 2023 Guidelines separately reopened banking access for VASPs (CLM-NG-004). The Investments and Securities Act, 2025 refreshed SEC's statutory basis (CLM-NG-006), and SEC has circulated a still-unconfirmed exposure draft amending the 2022 Rules (CLM-NG-005). A July 2026 Executive Order established a CBN-chaired Virtual Asset Council to coordinate the previously fragmented SEC/CBN dual-track regime (CLM-NG-d84f1c6a).
The most consequential development for this module is institutional rather than substantive: a July 2026 Presidential Executive Order established a CBN-chaired Virtual Asset Council, with SEC Nigeria and the Nigeria Revenue Service as vice-chairs and the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit and the Office of the National Security Adviser as members, tasked with harmonising regulation of Nigeria's virtual-assets ecosystem (CLM-NG-d84f1c6a). This is the first primary-source signal that Abuja intends to coordinate, rather than merely tolerate, the coexistence of SEC's securities-law licensing track and CBN's banking-access track. The Council's creation does not itself alter either underlying instrument, and its operating procedures, decision rights, and interaction with existing SEC registration and CBN account-designation processes are not yet defined in any primary source reviewed this cycle.
Outlook
The module's traffic-light status remains amber: core registration obligations are in force and enforced through the ARIP incubation mechanism, but the governing rulebook is mid-amendment, the great majority of licensed entities hold only provisional status, and the new coordination council has not yet been operationalised in public rulemaking. Three confirmations would materially change this picture: whether the Investments and Securities Act, 2025 has commenced and on what date; whether SEC's exposure-draft Rules have been finalised, and if so whether they supersede or supplement the 2022 Rules; and how the Virtual Asset Council's mandate interacts with SEC's and CBN's existing statutory powers. Until these are resolved, market participants face a licensing environment where the applicable rulebook, its date of full effect, and its coordinating institutional structure are all simultaneously in motion.
Crypto Licensing
Nigeria's crypto licensing regime rests on the Investments and Securities Act 2025, which since 25 March 2025 has given the Securities and Exchange Commission exclusive statutory authority under section 3(3)(b)-(i) to register and regulate virtual and digital asset exchanges, virtual asset service providers, custodians and digital-asset operators as capital-market activity. That statutory authority is currently administered through SEC's 2022 Digital Asset Rules and a January 2026 capital circular, but both are mid-revision: on 20 August 2026 SEC published Proposed Rules on Digital and Virtual Asset Operations, Custody and Markets for public comment, intended to replace the 2022 Rules outright. The draft rules would quadruple existing capital floors, introducing a tiered structure of N500 million for DAPO and RATOP categories and N200 million for other digital-asset providers, layered on top of the N2 billion minimum capital requirement the January 2026 circular already imposes on Digital Asset Exchanges and Custodians, with full compliance against that N2 billion floor due by 30 June 2027. The reported comment period on the August 2026 draft closed within roughly two weeks of exposure, around 3 September 2026, and the rules' finalised status has not been confirmed this cycle. For an operator assessing Nigeria, the licensing picture is therefore best read as a statutory foundation that is settled and in force, sitting beneath an operational rulebook that is actively tightening and whose final shape remains open.
Outlook
The SEC Proposed Rules are expected to reach some form of final status around the fourth quarter of 2026, and that finalisation is the single clearest near-term event that would change the entry calculus for a prospective Nigerian digital-asset licensee, particularly given the reported move toward Nigerian incorporation and resident-CEO requirements. Independent of that process, the 30 June 2027 deadline for Digital Asset Exchanges and Custodians to meet the N2 billion capital floor is already running and unaffected by the draft rules' outcome.
2 earlier distinct update(s)
Crypto Licensing
Nigeria's crypto licensing regime rests on a layered set of instruments that are still being reconciled into a single coherent framework. The foundational instrument is the Investments and Securities Act 2025, assented to by President Bola Tinubu on 25 March 2025, which under section 357 classifies virtual and digital assets, including cryptocurrencies and tokenised investment contracts, within the statutory definition of securities. This classification brings virtual asset service providers, digital asset exchanges and digital asset offering platforms within the Securities and Exchange Commission's registration and regulatory purview, and represents the single most consequential structural fact in Nigeria's crypto-licensing architecture: it resolved, at the level of statute, a question that had previously been addressed only through SEC rulemaking of uncertain statutory footing.
Building on that statutory base, the SEC's Amended Digital Assets Rules, which became effective 30 June 2025, introduced several important changes to the regulation of digital assets in Nigeria, addressing what their own framing describes as inadequacies in the prior regulatory approach. These rules represent the operative licensing framework under which Nigeria's digital asset exchanges and custodians currently function, pending the outcome of the next layer of rulemaking.
That next layer arrived on 20 August 2026, when the SEC published proposed Rules on Digital and Virtual Asset Operations, Custody and Markets for public comment. As drafted, these would raise the minimum capital for digital asset exchanges and custodians to NGN2 billion, for platform operators to NGN500 million, introduce a NGN30 million registration fee, and require Nigerian incorporation together with a Nigeria-resident chief executive or managing director. If adopted, these thresholds would represent a material tightening relative to the 2025 Amended Rules, materially raising the bar to market entry and potentially consolidating activity among better-capitalised incumbents. No public-comment closing date or adoption timeline was located in material reviewed this cycle, so the proposed rules should be treated as a draft rather than a binding requirement at this stage.
Overlaying both the statutory classification and the SEC rulemaking track is the Presidential Executive Order on Virtual Assets Coordination, which established a Virtual Asset Council chaired by the Central Bank of Nigeria, with the SEC and the Nigeria Revenue Service as vice-chairs. The Order is framed as responding to a regulatory environment that had become fragmented as virtual assets increasingly blurred the traditional boundaries between CBN's monetary and payments mandate and the SEC's securities mandate. The Council's practical function, as of this cycle, is coordination rather than displacement of either regulator's existing authority, and its effect on the pace or outcome of the SEC's August 2026 proposed rules has not yet been demonstrated in available material. Separately, the SEC's Agent Registration and Investor Protection programme had admitted a cumulative total of at least 27 operating cryptocurrency companies and startups in Nigeria as of 2025, by one secondary estimate, indicating a licensing track that is already populated and active even as the rules governing it continue to evolve.
Outlook
The principal open question for this module is the fate of the SEC's August 2026 proposed rules: whether they are adopted as drafted, materially softened following consultation, or allowed to lapse pending further Virtual Asset Council coordination. Until a public-comment closing date is confirmed, the NGN2 billion and NGN500 million capital thresholds should be treated as proposed rather than binding. The practical operation of the Virtual Asset Council, and whether it in fact expedites or further complicates the relationship between SEC licensing authority and CBN payments oversight, is the second open item carrying forward into the next cycle.
Crypto Licensing
Nigeria's crypto licensing framework rests on the Securities and Exchange Commission's 2022 Rules on Issuance, Offering Platforms and Custody of Digital Assets, which require digital asset offering platforms, digital asset exchanges, digital asset custodians and virtual asset service providers to register with and obtain SEC licensing. This foundational instrument was reinforced by the Investments and Securities Act 2025, effective 25 March 2025, which expressly extended the SEC's statutory investments-and-securities-business perimeter to cover digital and virtual asset issuance, offering, tokenisation, lifecycle management and hybrid digital-asset arrangements, giving the licensing regime a firmer statutory foundation than the 2022 Rules alone provided.
A further significant structural fact underpinning market access is the Central Bank of Nigeria's December 2023 Guidelines on Operations of Bank Accounts for Virtual Assets Service Providers, which reversed the CBN's 2021 ban and now permits banks to open and operate accounts for licensed VASPs. This reversal removed a major practical barrier that had previously constrained licensed crypto businesses' ability to access core banking services.
The licensing regime tightened materially in 2026 on two fronts. First, the SEC's revised minimum-capital guidelines, dated 16 January 2026, raise capital floors to approximately ₦1 billion for digital asset offering platforms and ₦2 billion for digital asset exchanges and digital asset custodians, with a compliance deadline of 30 June 2027, a substantial increase from prior thresholds that will particularly affect smaller VASPs. Second, the Presidential Executive Order on Virtual Assets Coordination, signed 17 July 2026, establishes a Virtual Asset Council to coordinate the SEC's, the CBN's and other authorities' overlapping virtual-asset mandates, while explicitly preserving each authority's existing statutory powers rather than consolidating them into a single regulator.
Taken together, an operative and actively-enforced licensing regime exists, but it remains mid-transition: overlapping SEC/CBN/Executive-Order coordination has not yet fully settled, and the revised capital floors are not yet due for compliance.
Outlook
The 30 June 2027 compliance deadline for the revised minimum-capital guidelines is the clearest near-term date to track, as is whether the Virtual Asset Council produces concrete coordination outcomes or remains a preservation-of-existing-powers arrangement. The SEC's broader August 2026 proposed rules, which would extend the classification and licensing perimeter to a consolidated framework covering foreign persons serving Nigerian residents, are expected to reach a decision point around the first quarter of 2027 and would represent a further material expansion of the licensing perimeter if adopted.
Sources and findings (7)
- T1SEC Nigeria — A five-part registration framework (Rules on Issuance, Offering and Custody of Digital Assets, 11 May 2022) covering digital-asset issuance, Digital Asset Offering Platforms (DAOPs), Digital Asset Custodians (DACs), Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) and Digital Asset Exchanges (DAX).M5bindingin forcenew
- T1Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Program (ARIP) — A VASP or Digital Investment Service Provider to obtain an Approval-in-Principle (AIP) for limited operation pending full rule commencement, applicable to local or foreign providers serving Nigeria.retrieved M4bindingin forcenew
- T4Busha and Quidax — First official SEC licences under ARIP as of August 2024; neither firm held full registration and both remained subject to close scrutiny with possibility of shut-down.retrieved M4bindingin forcenew
- T1Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) — Banks and CBN-regulated financial institutions to open designated accounts and provide settlement services for VASPs (Dec 2023 Guidelines), reversing prior restrictions.retrieved M5bindingin forcenew
- T1SEC Nigeria — Existing Rules on Digital Assets Issuance, Offering Platforms, Exchange and Custody via a still exposure-draft 'Rules on Digital and Virtual Assets Operations, Custody and Markets', not confirmed as commenced.M4non-bindingnew
- T1Investments and Securities Act, 2025 — Investments and Securities Act No. 29 of 2007, re-establishing SEC Nigeria's statutory basis to regulate investments and securities business including digital-asset activities characterised as securities.retrieved M5bindingin forcenew
- T1Presidential Executive Order on Virtual Assets Coordination, 2026 — A CBN-chaired Virtual Asset Council, with the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) and SEC Nigeria as vice-chairs and the NFIU and ONSA as members, to harmonise regulation of Nigeria's virtual-assets ecosystem, effective immediately from 17 July 2026.M4bindingin forcenew