Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commision has expressed interest in licensing digital assets companies to operate in the country. The Commission, however, wants to allow the trading of assets based on financial products like Equity, Debt or property but not cryptocurrencies.
Nigeria SEC: Digitize traditional financial products but not cryptos!
The Western African country is gearing up to legalize the trading of traditional financial products in the tokenized form at the expense of cryptos like BTC, ETH and other altcoins.
According to the head of Nigeria’s SEC, Abdulkadir Abbas, the country will only authorize listings of tokens that are not essentially crypto. He added that the Authority aims to register Fintech Firms as digital sub-brokers, crowdfunding third parties, tokenized coin issuers and fund managers. However, the Authority will not register crypto exchanges until there is a clear regulatory framework for the crypto market in the country.
He noted that the license applicants would also have to undergo a year of ‘incubation’, allowing the country’s SEC to study their operations, work culture and how they will render their services. He added that by the 10th month of the applicant’s stay in the country, the SEC would be able to determine whether the applicant is fit to hold the license or would have to be asked to stop offering services there.
The new report regarding SEC’s stance on crypto regulation comes after Nigeria’s Central Bank banned financial institutions from offering crypto services earlier in the year. The bank had launched the digital Naira, and its adoption was going slower than expected. As a result, it banned the usage of other cryptocurrencies as means of payment.
Despite that Ban, Nigeria is still topping in P2P trading of digital assets. According to data from Google Trends, Nigeria ranks second in the world y search interest of crypto assets behind El Salvador. Other data from Chainalysis shows that the country was among the top 20 globally regarding crypto adoption in 20233.
Keep watching Fintech Express for updates on this and other crypto-related news.