The Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently approved two digital asset exchanges, Busha Digital and Quidax Technologies, to operate officially in Nigeria. This “approval-in-principle” boosts the country’s crypto industry and makes these exchanges the first ones to be approved by the SEC.
On August 29, the SEC also revealed that 5 firms joined its Regulatory Incubation (RI) program. This program is in the SEC’s division of the accelerated regulatory incubation program aimed at fast-tracking the licensing of firms dealing with digital assets. Among the admitted firms are four digital asset offering platforms: namely, Trovotech Ltd, Wrapped CBDC Ltd, Housingexhange.NG Ltd, and Dream City Capital. Additionally, Blockvault Custodian Ltd has been accepted as a digital asset custodian. In return, these companies will be permitted to subject their technology and models to the scrutiny of the SEC.
SEC Warns Public About Unauthorized Crypto Operators
The Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Program (ARIP) intends to grant these firms an initial regulatory approval to commence operations as they await further, comprehensive regulations on digital assets. For its part, the SEC stated that the current population of ARIP and RI participants utilize DLT for creating and trading crypto assets. The testing that these firms will do will be limited in scale as well as in time; this will allow the SEC to gain important insights that could help the body in the formulation of future policies.
In the same announcements, the SEC also warned the public against dealing with fraudulent schemes and unauthorized entities. Investors are encouraged to check the authenticity of the digital asset service providers through the official websites of the SEC. The SEC’s actions are to safeguard the customers and guarantee that the market is only served by acknowledged and authorized participants.
Currently, the SEC is considering more applications for digital asset exchanges and is expected to approve those that meet its regulations. This has shown Nigeria’s readiness to practice a secure environment for the burgeoning cryptocurrency industry.
Source: https://www.livebitcoinnews.com/nigerian-sec-approves-first-digital-asset-exchanges/