Confidentiality is workable so long as the regulated firm can identify parties and disclose on demand.
What Nigeria actually says
Nigeria took the securities route rather than building a bespoke crypto statute, bringing digital assets under the securities regulator through the 2025 Act while the 2022 rules continue to carry the operational detail. The more consequential shift for anyone actually operating there was the central bank reversing its 2021 banking restriction in December 2023, which restored the account access that had pushed activity into informal channels. On confidentiality specifically, the file is empty in both directions: we found no instrument restricting anonymity-enhancing assets, mixers or self-hosted wallets, and equally nothing protecting them. Read that as an unwritten question rather than as permission.
The instruments that matter
- Investments and Securities Act 2025
- repeals the 2007 Act and formally recognises digital assets as securities under securities regulator oversight
- SEC Rules on Issuance, Offering Platforms and Custody of Digital Assets, 11 May 2022
- still the operative conduct rules, with Part D covering virtual asset service providers, supplemented by the Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme
- Central bank reversal, December 2023
- guidelines permitting banks to operate accounts for virtual asset service providers, reversing the February 2021 restriction
- No published position on confidentiality
- we found no Nigerian instrument addressing privacy coins, mixers or unhosted wallets
What this means for confidential transactions
Bubble is built for exactly this shape of obligation: amounts and balances live on chain as ciphertexts, computation happens without decryption, and the only disclosure path is an on-chain access list through which an authorized party - an auditor, a supervisor, a counterparty - can request scoped decryption. That is confidentiality from the public, not from the regulator.
Related entries
- SeychellesMiddle East & Africa · No anonymity rule, but the offshore route is closing
- GhanaMiddle East & Africa · The regulator that put self-custody in writing
- IsraelMiddle East & Africa · Light on-chain, heavy on data protection
- BahrainMiddle East & Africa · A listing test written against effects, not asset names
- KenyaMiddle East & Africa · The ban written into primary legislation, not a rulebook
- QatarMiddle East & Africa · Exclusion by perimeter rather than prohibition
Compliant by default.
See how selective disclosure satisfies a supervisor without publishing your book to the world.