Nigeria's SEC Mulls Allowing Tokenized Equity, Property but Not Crypto

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Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission is considering allowing tokenized coin offerings backed by equity, debt or property – but “not crypto” – on licensed digital asset exchanges, Bloomberg reported Monday.

“We always like to start, as a regulator, with a very simple, clear proposal before we go into the complex ones," Abdulkadir Abbas, head of securities and investment services at the Abuja-based commission, reportedly said.

The regulator is also processing applications for digital exchanges on a trial basis, intending them to undergo one year of “regulatory incubation” with limited services offered and under SEC monitoring to determine the firms' fitness to provide services.

“By the tenth month, we should be able to make a determination whether to register the firm, extend the incubation period or even ask the firm to stop operation,” Abbas told Bloomberg.

According to the report, the SEC will not start registering digital asset exchanges until it reaches an agreement with the nation's central bank, which has blocked local financial institutions from interacting with crypto services providers. Before the central bank doubled down on its restrictive rule, Nigeria was one of the fastest crypto adopters in the region.

Despite the central bank's resistance, there have been attempts to include crypto in the scope of regulations, with a new bill in the works that could recognize crypto as capital for investment.