Quidax stopped P2P trading five months after it was launched. Nigeria’s crypto sandbox faces its initial regulatory bottleneck due to SEC jurisdiction.
The crypto experiment within Nigeria reached a snag as Quidax terminated its peer-to-peer trading only five months later.
The sandbox is operated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Through its Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme, it has tracked the digital-asset exchanges to formalize the crypto market in Nigeria.
The P2P Problem Regulators Can’t Solve
In Nigeria, the crypto economy was dominated by P2P trading. Trading is done directly between users, and the transactions are normally settled through bank transfers outside the exchanges.
According to BusinessDay, in 2024, the SEC expressed concerns about obscure flows of transactions and off-platform settlements that were difficult to track.
Quidax implemented protection: only authenticated users could become merchants, Level-3 KYC was allowed, and two-factor authentication was required; the exchange personally reviewed the applications of merchants.
But the protections were not enough; the feature was stashed away, and even regulated P2P models are beyond the modern tolerance of regulation.
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Licensing Stalls as Requirements Surge
Participants in the Sandbox were promised full licenses by August 2025, but the SEC halted approvals to review its supervisory ability, derailing the schedule.
There was an increase in capital requirements. On January 16, the regulator increased the minimum to N500 million, approximately 352,000 dollars at existing rates.
These are regulated by the capital market through the Investment and Securities Act and are considered digital assets as securities. Stacked burdens are imposed on platforms that combine services.
Quidax removed 35 tokens, such as meme coins, gaming tokens, and Worldcoin; World Liberty Financial was added to the removal list.
The actions are indicative of strategic repositioning; the deals involving licenses would require less risk exposure, because the high-complexity features pose an immediate risk of approval.
The sandbox offered innovation with security in Nigeria, though the withdrawal of Quidax demonstrates that regulators are more concerned with control, which, in this case, is visibility and capital adequacy over informal structures.
The first restricting line is evident: innovation needs to be adapted to the frameworks, or it will be postponed.
Source: https://www.livebitcoinnews.com/quidax-shuts-p2p-nigerias-crypto-sandbox-faces-reality/
