News, data and analysis on tokenized assets, market design and digital economic systems.
Author of Payments System Vision 2028, which reverses the February 2021 ban on banks servicing cryptoasset accounts and proposes CBN observer nodes on approved blockchains: continuous supervisory visibility into issuance, redemption and reserve positions in place of periodic audit.
Nigeria's central bank, given its legal basis by the Central Bank Act of 1958 and in full operation from 1 July 1959, now governed by the CBN Act 2007, with responsibility for monetary and price stability, bank licensing and supervision, and the payments system. Having barred banks from servicing cryptoasset accounts in February 2021, it reversed position in its Payments System Vision 2028, published in June 2026, which proposes treating fully fiat-collateralised stablecoins as monetary instruments subject to CBN licensing, 100% high-quality reserves, daily attestations and monthly audits, with naira-denominated reserves held domestically by licensed Nigerian custodians. The document also proposes CBN observer nodes on approved blockchains, giving continuous supervisory visibility into issuance, redemption and reserve positions in place of periodic audit. On 31 March 2026 the bank opened a virtual asset service provider supervisory pilot whose participants included Flutterwave, Paystack and WrappedCBDC, issuer of the cNGN naira token.
Developments in which Central Bank of Nigeria is a named party, newest first.
Cohort 2 of the Central Bank of Nigeria's regulatory sandbox takes applications from 12 August for supervised live testing of stablecoin issuance, virtual asset payments, custody and on-ramps.
The IMF Executive Board concluded its 2026 Article IV consultation with Nigeria on 9 June 2026 and identified stablecoin oversight as a priority.
Cohort 2 of the bank's regulatory sandbox opened on 11 August 2026 with a Virtual Asset Service Provider track covering fiat-backed stablecoin payments, stablecoin issuance models, virtual asset payments, custody, wallets, token-based products and fiat on and off-ramps. Applications run from 12 to 31 August. Admission is not a licence and substitutes for no other agency's approval.
The Central Bank of Nigeria issued guidelines on banks' operation of accounts for virtual asset service providers, superseding the circulars of 12 January 2017 and 5 February 2021 that had barred regulated institutions from serving the sector. Banks were permitted to open designated and settlement accounts for VASPs licensed by the Nigerian securities regulator, but remained prohibited from holding or trading virtual currencies on their own account.
The Central Bank of Nigeria launched the eNaira, the second retail central bank digital currency in operation anywhere, using permissioned distributed ledger technology and a two-tier distribution model in which the central bank runs the system and financial institutions hold treasury wallets. The eNaira is a liability of the central bank, pays no interest so as to limit substitution away from bank deposits, and applies tiered identity requirements with transaction and balance limits rather than allowing anonymity.
What issued, what settled, what the supervisors changed, with the numbers behind it and a note on what the numbers do not show. One email, Thursday mornings.
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