The Securities and Trade Fee (SEC) has reiterated its dedication to leveraging blockchain intelligence to fight the rising wave of cryptocurrency-related fraud, in a decisive transfer to strengthen oversight of Nigeria’s digital asset ecosystem.
Talking at a joint webinar hosted by SEC Nigeria and international blockchain analytics agency Chainalysis on Monday, SEC Director-Common Dr. Emomotimi Agama emphasised the necessity for full transparency in crypto transactions as a cornerstone of regulatory enforcement.
The webinar, themed “Combating Scams with Blockchain Intelligence,” introduced collectively regulators, analysts, and business stakeholders to handle the evolving threats within the digital finance area.
“While you think about the way forward for cryptocurrency transactions, you think about that if the fraudulent practices are already climbing the best way they’re now, what’s going to the long run maintain if all of us sit doing nothing?” Agama requested.
“If all of us sit not being coordinated, not collaborating, and discovering variations that we should always not discover, we threat enabling a harmful future.”
Agama outlined the SEC’s technique to deepen its technical capabilities, specializing in blockchain’s immutable nature to hint illicit exercise. He burdened the significance of figuring out pockets clusters, analyzing fund flows, and completely recording transactions throughout main blockchains akin to Bitcoin and Ethereum.
“On the SEC, we have to do deep dives into knowledge intelligence,” he stated.
“We should converse in regards to the technical foundations that drive us to transaction transparency—the place each Bitcoin, Ethereum transaction is completely recorded, and wallets belonging to the identical entity are recognized by circulation evaluation and buying and selling funds from sources of data.”
Agama warned that the crypto ecosystem is more and more being exploited by refined fraud schemes, together with pretend decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, NFT scams, and mirror change platforms that mimic authentic websites to siphon person deposits.
“There are liquidity mining schemes with pretend DeFi protocols promising natural yields, and faux NFT collectible initiatives focusing on creative communities,” he defined.
“We’re additionally seeing social media-driven campaigns on Twitter, Telegram, WhatsApp, and romance scams 2.0—the place courting apps are used to construct belief earlier than crypto funding requests.”
The urgency of the SEC’s stance is underscored by findings from the Chainalysis 2025 Crypto Crime Report, launched earlier this 12 months. In line with the report, illicit crypto addresses acquired $178 billion over the previous 5 years. The height 12 months was 2022, with $54.3 billion, adopted by 2023 ($46.1 billion) and 2024 ($40.9 billion).
Stablecoins accounted for 63% of illicit transaction volumes, marking a shift away from Bitcoin in sure prison actions. Nonetheless, ransomware and darknet market transactions stay largely Bitcoin-dominated.
The report additionally revealed a 21% year-over-year enhance in stolen funds in 2024, totaling $2.2 billion. Whereas DeFi platforms have been the first targets, centralized exchanges noticed a surge in assaults through the second and third quarters. Notably, personal key compromises accounted for 43.8% of stolen crypto, with North Korean hackers accountable for $1.34 billion, or 61% of the whole stolen funds final 12 months.
Agama hailed the current enactment of the Funding and Securities Act (ISA) 2025, which got here into impact in April, as a transformative milestone for Nigeria’s crypto regulatory panorama. The regulation offers long-awaited readability for digital asset operations, which have lengthy existed in a regulatory vacuum.
“Clearly, we consider the emergence of the ISA 2025 is a groundbreaker,” Agama stated.
“It ensures that as a nation, we offer readability, and as a nation, we’re capable of cooperate with one another in coping with the present state of affairs. Additionally it is essential that we don’t stifle innovation.”
Agama concluded with a name for unified motion amongst regulators, business gamers, and expertise suppliers to proactively handle crypto fraud. He emphasised that blockchain’s inherent traceability have to be harnessed to guard buyers and protect market integrity.
“With all the assorted instruments at our disposal, it turns into clear that we should all brace as much as the challenges of the long run,” he stated.
“What we have to do collectively is to verify we cease this proper firstly.”
As Nigeria positions itself as a regional chief in digital finance, the SEC’s push for transparency and intelligence-led regulation alerts a proactive shift towards safeguarding the way forward for crypto investments.
