The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has moved to overhaul how it polices the country’s booming digital asset industry, unveiling a revised framework that would raise registration costs and impose stiffer capital thresholds on exchanges, custodians, and a widening circle of virtual asset businesses.
Under the proposed rules, digital asset exchanges would pay a ₦30 million ($22,270) registration fee, while other virtual asset service providers would pay ₦15 million ($11,130). But the fee schedule is only part of the story.
Exchanges and digital asset custodians would each be required to hold ₦2 billion ($1.5 million) in minimum capital, while other virtual asset service providers would need ₦200 million ($148,400).
Token issuers, digital asset offering platforms, and real-world asset tokenization platforms would all face minimum capital requirements of ₦500 million ($371,000).
The proposal marks the latest escalation in a pattern of tightening. Just months earlier, in January 2026, the SEC had already raised the capital threshold for digital asset exchanges and custodians from ₦500 million to ₦2 billion, while platforms issuing digital assets were required to hold ₦1 billion, with all entities given until June 2027 to comply.
The earlier round also brought smaller “ancillary” service providers- firms offering things like blockchain analytics tools into the regulatory net for the first time, with a ₦300 million capital floor.
Notably, the newest draft appears to walk back that expansion somewhat: ancillary virtual asset providers, who supply technological infrastructure to virtual asset businesses, are no longer included in the proposed rules after previously carrying a ₦300 million minimum capital requirement under the SEC’s March guidelines.
The regulatory tightening isn’t confined to money. Perhaps the more consequential shift is around disclosure: the SEC could require regulated firms to grant it API-based or other electronic access to their operational, transactional, financial, wallet, custody, and settlement data a level of visibility into crypto firms’ books that would be unprecedented in Nigeria’s market.
The draft rules also reach into corners of the industry that had previously operated in a grey zone. Staking, lending, yield products, liquidity pools, peer-to-peer and over-the-counter trading, and non-custodial wallet services are all explicitly addressed in the proposed framework, and exchange operators would face additional constraints, including a ban on freely mixing customer assets with company funds, with related-party custody arrangements required to use a separately incorporated, regulated custodian.
The SEC’s rulemaking doesn’t exist in isolation. It sits within a broader Virtual Assets Coordination Order that brings the Central Bank of Nigeria, the SEC, and tax authorities under one unified crypto framework and runs parallel to the Virtual Asset Service Providers Regulation Bill, 2026, sponsored by Deputy Senate President Jibrin Barau, which would enshrine licensing, reporting, and compliance obligations for exchanges and wallet providers into permanent legislation.
The regulatory ratchet reflects lingering tension between Abuja and the crypto industry.
Nigeria has one of the world’s most active retail crypto markets, driven partly by currency volatility and a young, tech-savvy population, but that same volatility, along with a high-profile dispute with Binance in 2024 that saw two of its executives detained, has kept regulators wary of a lightly supervised sector.
Industry players are likely to push back on the pace and scale of the increases, arguing that steep capital and fee requirements risk squeezing out smaller domestic startups in favor of larger, well-capitalized players, a tension the SEC will have to weigh as it finalizes the rules.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
Nigeria’s SEC is making it significantly more expensive and capital-intensive to run a crypto business; registration fees, capital thresholds, and now real-time data access requirements are all rising sharply, even as the rules pull previously unregulated activities like staking and P2P trading into scope.
This favors well-funded players and could push smaller startups out of the formal market, so anyone operating or building in Nigeria’s crypto space needs to watch the compliance deadlines closely rather than treat this as routine red tape.
