Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed significantly tougher financial requirements for digital-asset businesses, potentially reshaping competition in the country’s rapidly expanding crypto market.
Under the proposed Digital and Virtual Asset Operations, Custody and Markets Rules, digital-asset exchanges and custodians would need minimum capital of ₦2 billion, while digital-asset platform operators, offering platforms and real-world asset tokenisation platforms would require ₦500 million. The SEC also proposes a ₦30 million registration fee for each of these categories. Virtual-asset service providers would face a ₦200 million minimum capital requirement.
The framework goes beyond operator requirements. The SEC is proposing a ₦1 million limit per issuer and ₦10 million aggregate limit over 12 months for retail investors in digital-asset offerings. Investors exceeding certain thresholds would face additional risk warnings, suitability assessments and consent requirements. Institutional and other qualified investor categories could be exempted.
For investors and fintech businesses, the proposals could raise entry barriers and encourage consolidation among operators with stronger balance sheets, while giving regulated platforms greater prudential requirements.
However, these are proposed rules, not yet binding regulations. The SEC opened the framework for public comments, with submissions due within two weeks of its August 20 publication.
Investor watch: the final rules, implementation timeline and how existing crypto operators respond to the proposed capital and investment limits.
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