Nigeria Puts Bitcoin Under New Five-Agency Virtual Asset Council

Crypto News

Nigeria has formally brought digital assets into its legal framework after President Bola Tinubu signed the Virtual Assets Coordination Executive Order 2026 on July 17, establishing a five-agency Virtual Asset Council to oversee the sector. The order took immediate effect under Section 5 of the 1999 Constitution and centralizes coordination among regulators that previously supervised the market in isolation. The presidency said unregistered and fraudulent operators had exploited the gaps between overlapping mandates to target citizens’ savings. The council is tasked with harmonizing registration, supervision and enforcement across the ecosystem, marking one of Africa’s most consequential moves to institutionalize crypto oversight this year and to give Bitcoin traders a defined domestic rulebook.

Separately, the U.S. administration is weighing a new oversight structure for artificial intelligence modeled on the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the self-regulatory body that polices Wall Street brokers. Under the proposal, an independent organization would evaluate the safety of AI models while the Securities and Exchange Commission provides supervision, letting industry help set standards rather than leaving every rule to government. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly developed the concept, now under review by White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. The plan responds to Silicon Valley complaints that inconsistent AI rules — including export controls that briefly limited advanced models from leading labs — lack predictability and consistency.

Under Nigeria’s new order, oversight duties are divided by service type rather than concentrated in a single agency. Businesses offering securities-type products will register with the Securities and Exchange Commission, while payment, settlement and custody providers, including stablecoin issuers, fall under the Central Bank of Nigeria, which chairs the council. The Nigeria Revenue Service serves as vice-chair alongside the SEC, with the financial-intelligence unit and national security office as members. The central bank is also opening a regulatory sandbox for blockchain products, and a dedicated tax regime is being drafted. The council must publish its implementation framework within 30 days of the order’s commencement.

The Nigerian move lands as other jurisdictions accelerate their own frameworks. In Japan, lawmakers passed an amendment on July 15 that reclassifies crypto assets under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, the statute governing securities, after the bill cleared the upper house of parliament. The shift subjects digital-asset trading to disclosure and market-conduct standards long applied to conventional securities, and signals a tightening of investor-protection rules across major Asian markets. Tokyo’s decision to fold tokens into its primary securities law rather than maintain a separate payments-based regime mirrors a broader global pattern of treating digital assets as regulated financial instruments rather than niche technology.

The AI-oversight debate is unfolding amid intensifying competition with China. Beijing-based startup Moonshot recently unveiled its Kimi K3 model, positioning it against high-end systems from OpenAI and Anthropic and stoking concern over U.S. competitiveness and the sustainability of large AI investments. The proposed FINRA-style body echoes an idea floated by Alphabet’s DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis, who suggested an independent expert organization operating under government supervision with the industry covering operating costs. That concept reportedly drew support from Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and SpaceX’s Elon Musk, though officials stress no plan has been finalized and President Trump has not completed a formal review.

Nigeria’s executive action complements a parallel legislative track: the Virtual Assets Service Providers bill, known as SB 956, passed a second reading in the Senate in June, advancing statutory rules to protect investors alongside the administration’s structural reforms. Together they underscore how regulators worldwide are racing to close definitional gaps as crypto markets mature. Officials say the coordinated approach is designed to eliminate the supervisory blind spots that scam operators exploited, while a comprehensive national white paper is being prepared to chart industry direction. For traders and issuers, the message is consistent across capitals: clearer rules, firmer registration requirements and heavier compliance obligations are arriving.

COINOTAG’s reading is that these moves form a single arc — governments are converging on institutionalized oversight for both crypto and AI, favoring self-regulatory structures under formal supervision over ad hoc enforcement. That regulatory tightening lands on a fragile tape. Our aggregate market data shows the Fear & Greed Index at 25 out of 100, firmly in Extreme Fear, while Bitcoin dominance sits at 69.8% and total crypto market capitalization holds near $1.84 trillion. Capital is rotating defensively toward Bitcoin as altcoins bleed share, and clearer rulebooks in Lagos and Tokyo may ultimately anchor the institutional confidence this risk-averse market currently lacks.