Finally, after 2 years, Nigeria seeks legalize crypto investment

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The final approval of the Investments and Securities Act, 2007 (Amendment) Bill, will legalise crypto investment in Nigeria.

Nigeria is a technology adaptive country in the world. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) launched the Nigerian CBDC, or say eNaira, in Oct 2021. The citizens from Nigeria showed a very slow Inclination toward the adoption of the CBDC payment system. In the last 12 months, eNaira adoption was only 0.5% of citizens. 

On 18 Dec, Nigerian-based masthead Punch Newspapers reported that the Investments and Securities Act, 2007 (Amendment) Bill will be signed and aims to give legal clarity on the crypto investment if the law will come into effect after final approval.

2007 Amendment approval will provide legal clarity for the Country’s Securities and Exchange Commission to “recognize cryptocurrency and other digital funds as capital for investment.”

Reportedly Babangida Ibrahim, the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Capital Markets, said that country needed step-up with the date & needs to move with trends parallelly with international practices. 

Nigeria Crypto ban 

In February 2021, The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) ordered all crypto exchanges to suspend their operations and also ordered all local banks to stop providing services to any crypto exchanges as well as freeze the bank accounts of all those people who were dealing with cryptocurrencies.

Later, the majority of the banks said that it was impossible to detect whether a bank account holder was using the fund’s transactions for crypto buy/sell or something else. 

In that situation, the majority of Nigerian crypto traders shifted their activities to the P2P crypto trade platform.

Many reports believe that the Nigerian crypto ban decision from CBN was only to make Nigerian CBDC successful but the current Nigerian CBDC adoption rate is showing that country’s Central Bank failed.

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