Nigeria has more crypto users than almost anywhere else on earth, and until now, its regulatory framework has been held together mostly by good intentions and overlapping bureaucracy. That changes, at least on paper, after President Bola Tinubu signed the Presidential Executive Order on Virtual Assets Coordination on July 17, 2026, creating a formal council to govern the sector.

The order establishes a Virtual Asset Council chaired by the Central Bank of Nigeria, with the Nigeria Revenue Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission among its supporting members. The council has 30 days from the signing date to produce a harmonized implementation framework covering the full virtual assets landscape.

What the order actually does

The executive order does not create a new standalone regulator or strip any existing agency of its statutory powers. Responsibilities are split along a familiar financial logic. The SEC takes charge of securities-related virtual asset activities, while the CBN handles non-securities services, which covers most of the payment and transfer activity that dominates everyday crypto use in Nigeria.

The order also calls for a regulatory sandbox, a controlled environment where new products and services can be tested under regulatory supervision without immediately triggering the full weight of compliance requirements. A Virtual Assets White Paper and a dedicated tax policy from the Nigeria Revenue Service are also on the agenda.

On the enforcement side, the order is explicitly framed around curbing fraud, money laundering, and terrorism financing. Unregistered operators are identified as a specific vulnerability, which signals that the follow-up framework will likely include licensing requirements with real teeth.

Context: Nigeria’s complicated crypto history

Nigeria is home to an estimated 20 to 25 million virtual asset users, a figure that reflects both widespread adoption and a genuine dependence on crypto as a financial tool in a country where currency volatility and limited banking access make alternatives attractive.

In 2021, Nigerian authorities instructed banks to close accounts linked to crypto exchanges, effectively pushing much of the activity into peer-to-peer channels that are harder to monitor and regulate. Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume, ran into a high-profile standoff with Nigerian authorities in 2024 that resulted in the detention of one of its executives.

What investors should watch

The sandbox parameters, the tax policy specifics, and the licensing requirements for operators are all still pending. The CBN’s role as council chair is worth watching closely, as its position at the head of the new council gives it significant influence over how tightly the framework ultimately squeezes the sector.

International exchanges that retreated from Nigeria or limited their services after the 2021 banking restrictions will be looking at the 30-day framework deadline as the first real signal of whether this regulatory shift is durable. The Nigeria Revenue Service’s forthcoming tax policy will be equally important, since tax treatment determines a lot of the math on whether institutional players can make the economics of the Nigerian market work.