Back in 2016, the Central Bank (CNN) and the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Commission decided to look deep into Bitcoin after the whole MMM Ponzi scheme mess. Fast forward to January 2017, the Nigerian SEC strictly warned everyone that they weren’t backing any companies or groups dealing with cryptocurrencies. They made it clear that if you got into crypto, you were on your own when it came to any losses.
Then in February 2021, the central bank stepped in and told banks and financial institutions to immediately stop supporting cryptocurrency transactions, citing worries about money laundering and funding terrorism. A lot of people in Nigeria dealing with crypto found their bank accounts frozen, too.
Come May 2022, the Nigerian SEC rolled out new rules for how to issue and manage digital assets. They laid out how financial institutions should handle these assets. Plus, they set a hefty requirement of 500 million Naira (about $362,500) for crypto exchanges wanting to get a virtual asset service provider (VASP) license.
In May 2023, the SEC put out some regulations for digital assets, signaling they were trying to find a balance between completely banning crypto and having no rules at all. By December, they lifted the ban on banks managing accounts for crypto service providers. The central bank noted that global trends showed it was time to start regulating VASPs, which includes crypto.
Moving on to January 2024, the central bank shared some initial guidelines for banks looking to open cryptocurrency accounts, but they still can’t trade or hold these assets themselves. The guidelines are pretty strict on anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) rules, and banks need to set what they call “prudent” transaction limits and can’t allow cash withdrawals from crypto accounts.
Finally, in 2025, President Tinubu signed the new Investments and Securities Act (ISA) 2024 into law, which tossed out the previous Investments and Securities Act from 2007. This new act officially recognizes cryptocurrencies and other virtual assets as securities for the first time, meaning any business dealing with digital assets now has to register with the SEC and follow their rules. It’s a big step towards cracking down on fraud in the digital world and building trust.
Nigeria, just like every country would do , was only trying to be careful at first as they were unsure of what the outcome of Bitcoin would be.
But as you've stated you could see with time they began to adjust and little by little I believe Nigeria would soon be a crypto free nation.
The 500million naira requirements from VASPs , which a lot of exchanges couldn't meetup with is clearly one of the reasons that made Nigerians and especially me , not to trust Nigerian based exchanges. Because I mean it's nearly impossible for an exchange to seek license for around 500million. hat's why whenever I see adverts from skits and so on about exchanges I just wave at them.