Is crypto legal in Nigeria? What the rules say in 2026

Yes. Buying, holding and selling crypto is legal for individuals in Nigeria, and it always was. The Central Bank's February 2021 circular restricted banks, not owners, and the CBN lifted it on 22 December 2023. Nigerians buy and sell every day through apps like Busha, Daya Coins, Quidax and Luno. Your gains have been taxable since 1 January 2026.

Is it legal to buy and hold crypto in Nigeria?

Buying and holding crypto is legal for individuals in Nigeria, and no Nigerian law has ever made it a crime. What the country has had instead is a run of rules aimed at the companies in the middle: banks first, then the platforms themselves. Nothing in any of them is addressed to you as an owner.

Two pieces of law settled the question. The Investments and Securities Act 2025 recognised digital assets as securities under Nigerian law for the first time, which put crypto platforms under the Securities and Exchange Commission. And the Presidential Executive Order on Virtual Assets Coordination, signed on 17 July 2026, set up a council chaired by the CBN to keep the agencies in step rather than creating a new regulator.

Neither of them changed anything you have to do. They changed who the platform you use answers to.

Did the CBN ban crypto, and is the ban still in place?

The CBN never banned you from owning crypto. Its circular of 5 February 2021 told banks and other financial institutions to close accounts being used for crypto, which is a rule about bank accounts rather than about ownership, and it was lifted on 22 December 2023 when the CBN issued its Guidelines on the Operations of Bank Accounts for Virtual Assets Service Providers.

What those guidelines do:

• Banks can open designated accounts for crypto platforms, settle their trades and handle their foreign exchange flows.
• Banks still can't hold or trade crypto in their own accounts.
• Money leaves one of those designated accounts only by transfer to another designated account, or by manager's cheque. Cash withdrawals and third-party cheques aren't allowed.
• The guidelines apply to platforms the SEC has licensed, and to nobody else.

What it means for you: the account your platform settles through is a supervised account with a paper trail, which is the opposite of where things stood in 2021. It doesn't mean your own bank account is covered by anything, and that is what the peer-to-peer question further down turns on.

Is crypto legal tender in Nigeria?

No. The naira is Nigeria's legal tender and crypto is not, so no Nigerian business has to accept Bitcoin or USDT from you as payment, and one that refuses is within its rights. Legal to own is a different question from legal to pay with, and the two get mixed up constantly.

The practical version: you can hold USDT, sell it, and spend the naira anywhere. You can't insist a Nigerian shop or landlord takes the USDT itself.

Who regulates crypto in Nigeria now?

Crypto in Nigeria has two regulators, and the split is about what the asset does. The SEC regulates crypto as securities under the Investments and Securities Act 2025, which covers exchanges, digital asset operators and custodians. The CBN regulates payment, settlement and custody services involving virtual assets that aren't securities.

The July 2026 executive order put the CBN in the chair of a coordinating council, with the Nigeria Revenue Service and the SEC as vice chairs, alongside the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit and the Office of the National Security Adviser. For you that split matters in exactly two places: the SEC is where you look up whether a platform is registered, and the Nigeria Revenue Service is who the tax is owed to.

Is peer-to-peer trading legal in Nigeria?

Nothing in Nigerian law makes peer-to-peer trading a crime, and the CBN's December 2023 guidelines don't mention it. That silence is the whole difficulty, and it's worth being precise about rather than guessing at.

The guidelines say in terms that they cover platforms the SEC has licensed. PwC Nigeria's reading goes a step further: because the guidelines don't contemplate peer-to-peer trading at all, PwC says the restriction on bank accounts used for direct peer-to-peer trades has not been lifted. That is a firm's inference from what the document leaves out rather than a line in the document, and it is the most careful reading anyone has published.

What it means for you: a peer-to-peer trade is legal to make, and it is the route most likely to put a stranger's naira into your bank account. We've set out what happens then, and how to reduce the chance of it, in how to sell crypto for naira without getting your account frozen.

Do you pay tax on crypto in Nigeria?

Yes, since 1 January 2026. The Nigeria Tax Act 2025 made digital assets chargeable assets, and the Nigeria Revenue Service set out how it works in Information Circular No. 2026/21, Guidelines on the Taxation of Virtual Assets, dated 31 July 2026. Three separate charges can touch one trade.

Stablecoins are the exception on the 1% withholding tax: a USDT or USDC disposal doesn't carry it. The gain is still yours to work out and report.

One figure is worth correcting, because several Nigerian outlets have reported it the other way round. The Nigeria Tax Act 2025 does exempt capital gains where disposal proceeds come to less than 150 million naira and the gains are under 10 million naira in any twelve consecutive months. But Mondaq's analysis of the Act and MOC Accountants' guide to it both scope that exemption to shares in a Nigerian company registered under CAMA, and both say digital assets are chargeable under the Act with no equivalent exemption.

What it means for you: if you sell crypto at a gain, you don't get that exemption. What you do get is the Nigeria's personal income tax bands — the first 800,000 naira of your total annual income is tax-free, and the top personal rate is 25%. So a gain is added to everything else you earned that year and taxed at the rate that lands on.

Where does Daya Coins fit?

Daya Coins is built for the everyday case this question usually sits behind: you want to buy or sell crypto with naira, from your own account, without trading with a stranger. You get a dedicated naira account, you buy and sell straight from that balance, and when you sell you withdraw the naira to your Nigerian bank account.

On cost, Daya Coins charges no buy fee, no sell fee, no withdrawal fee and no network fee on your side, and says on its own page that it makes its money on the spread built into the rate you see — where Quidax charges 0.1% as a taker on its USDT/NGN order book, plus 200 naira to withdraw naira and 50 naira stamp duty from 10,000 naira up. There is no minimum on Daya Coins, and a trade settles in seconds.

The part that bears on the legality question is that there is no peer-to-peer leg. Nobody you've never met sends you money, which takes the commonest cause of a frozen account out of the picture. If you trade in larger size, Daya Pro runs a USDT/NGN order book with a published 0% taker fee and 0.05% maker fee, from $1.

How do you check whether a crypto app is registered in Nigeria?

The SEC publishes the list, and the catch is that the list is behind. Its Registered FinTech Operators page, under the Fintech and Innovation Hub it calls FinPort, names Busha Digital Limited and Quidax Technologies Limited as digital asset exchanges under the Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme. The page itself carries the date 25 May 2025.

Seven more firms have joined the same programme since that date. On 2 July 2026 the SEC granted approval-in-principle to seven crypto firms — Bitbarter Technologies, Luno Fintech Nigeria, GetEquity, Koinkoin Global Network, Wrapped CBDC, Trovotech and Blockvault Custodian — taking the total to nine. So somebody who checks that page today and concludes Luno has no approval would be wrong, through no fault of their own.

How to check it properly:

1. Open the SEC's Registered FinTech Operators page and read the date printed on it.
2. Look for the registered company name rather than the brand name. Busha trades as Busha and is registered as Busha Digital Limited; the two often differ.
3. Check the SEC's own news and circulars for anything newer than the date on the register.
4. Read an approval-in-principle as what the SEC says it is. In its words, it "is not a final licence, and remains contingent upon the entity's continuous compliance with all regulatory, operational, and supervisory requirements".

Registration isn't the only question worth asking, either. It tells you who supervises a platform. It doesn't tell you what that platform charges you, how fast it pays out, or whether somebody you've never met is the one sending you the naira — so check the register, then check the price.