Nigeria government is planning a National position on cryptocurrency. To this end, the country has set up a committee on Cryptocurrency, headed by the National Security Adviser to the President and have members drawn across government regulatory agencies like EFCC, SEC, NFIU, NAICOM and others to deliberate and come up with a National position on Crypto.
Of all Government regulatory agencies mentioned, I believed it's only the Securities and Exchange Commission that's dynamic, realistic and have embraced the future. SEC believed Cryptocurrency is like an air that cannot be caged or regulated based on its majorly decentralized nature.
Timi Agama, speaking on behalf of SEC said Cryptocurrency market is a market of over one trillion dollars and as such cannot be ignored. He believed Nigeria ignoring Cryptocurrency is synonymous to Nigeria choosing stagnation while countries embracing it are moving in the forward direction.
He also believed the rate at which investments is moving into Crypto will negatively affect the investment in stock market.
“A market that has opportunity for ICOs, derivatives, is not a market we can ignore."
-Timi Agama
SEC is favorably dispose to providing a regulatory framework for Cryptocurrency/digital assets and it's derivatives as against complete ban on its trading/usage in Nigeria.
To put this in perspective, the trading volume on Nigerian Stock Exchange, regulated by SEC is 5.6 Billion Naira while Binance, the biggest centralized Cryptocurrency Exchange in the world that has a Nigeria Naira base pair, Bitcoin/Naira trade is in excess of 13 Billion Naira. This excludes Crypto wallets holdings, other CEXes and DEXes Nigerians trade Cryptocurrency on. We can thus conclude that Crypto trading in Nigeria is three times bigger than the Trading volume on Nigerian Stock Exchange.
In view of this, The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have agreed to collaborate and conduct research with a view to finding ways of regulating the cryptocurrency market.
“It is our desire that we do more work, collaborate as regulators and analyse to make sure that we provide a level playing field where Nigerians, international investors & whoever is interested in this space will be comfortable and happy. "
-SEC
Something tells me, knowing the nature of Nigeria government, this collaboration and National policy on Crypto, if it will not birth outright ban on Cryptocurrency in Nigeria, will birth unreasonable Crypto tax.
