Nigeria Proposes 80% Cold-Storage Rule for Crypto Customer Assets
Nigeria's regulators are proposing a requirement that crypto firms keep 80 percent of customer assets in cold storage, a threshold that would rank among Africa's strictest crypto custody standards. The rule would represent a major compliance shift for all digital asset service providers operating in the country.
Nigeria Crypto: the 80% rule is a consumer protection story, not a crackdown
Keeping four-fifths of customer assets offline — disconnected from any live system a hacker can reach — is genuinely how you stop an exchange collapse wiping out ordinary savers.
But the source material here is thin: a proposal, a threshold, no detail on timelines or who enforces it. And Nigeria is already stacking compliance layers fast — capital requirements, tax withholding, a sandbox that isn't a licence. Each layer is defensible in isolation.
The real question is whether the firms that can't afford the cold-storage infrastructure to meet this threshold are the risky ones, or just the small ones.
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- Nigeria wants crypto firms to lock up 80% of customer assets offline · techcabal.com · T1