Absa commends SEC for proactive regulation of digital assets

Absa Nigeria, a leading pan-African bank with a strong footprint across the African continent, has commended the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for proactively providing a regulatory framework for investing and trading digital assets, including cryptocurrencies.

CEO of Absa Nigeria, Sadiq Abu, gave this commendation while speaking during a programme on a pay television network monitored by our correspondent. He also lauded the commission for recognising digital assets as securities.

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SEC, the regulator of the Nigerian capital market, had over the weekend published a new guideline on Issuance, Offering Platforms and Custody of Digital Assets, fulfilling the promise it made last year to examine the digital currency to gain a better understanding and develop regulations to protect investors.

He said, “SEC decided to be proactive around cryptocurrency and digital assets. The SEC has realised that these are rightly called securities and further created a framework to bring them within the broader securities’ regulatory framework in Nigeria”

According to him, the SEC has also created a framework for protecting investors by requiring investments to be held by digital assets custodians and acknowledged that exchanges or platforms for trading digital assets needed to be regulated.