Capital Markets Authority (CMA) of Kenya is of the view that other Governmental Authorities like it should assist CMA in testing crypto assets. CMA seeks other regulators’ expertise because it wants to ensure an encompassing step towards further adoption of digital assets.
Kenya’s CMA is desirous of working closely with the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) with regard to testing crypto assets. The regulator is of the view that for encompassing concrete steps towards crypto adoption both will need to work towards a common cause. This common cause can be arrived at by forging expertise of both institutions in one place, believes CMA.
The initiative towards crypto is because of CMA’s recent report that was released under the title “2021’s Q1 Capital Markets Soundness Report”. In this report, CMA has revealed that Kenya is amongst the top five countries, which have the world’s highest crypto trading volume per day. This fact was duly endorsed by the recent report of Chainalysis and Blockchainnenter.net. Both of these entities confirmed that amongst Kenyan’s their interest in Bitcoin search is about 95%.
However, being fully aware that crypto popularity is getting bigger every day, CMA believes that it has a mandate, which requires investor protection. CMA said that it is the utmost priority of the authority to ensure that Kenyan crypto investors are provided with protection. It believes that the crypto industry is prone to frauds and thefts and therefore the issue needs to be addressed as soon as possible.
CMA further stated that the authority has grown a keen interest in cryptocurrencies. In order to further its interest, it is necessary to examine crypto assets from the perspective of capital markets. The authority believes that the growth of the Kenyan crypto industry can bring about positive changes in the local capital markets.
However, there were contrary views in other African country’s regulator such as the Securities & Exchange Commission of Ghana. The regulator of Ghana said that the citizens would need to ensure that they should keep themselves far away from crypto. Similarly, in Nigeria too, the country’s regulators have been trying to convince citizens that crypto is not good for them at all.
However, crypto investors in both of these countries are not in agreement with their respective governments. Instead, they have been arguing that their governments are acting in total negation of what is the demand of their people. However, contrary to this, Nigerian Central Bank even went on to banning crypto transactions entirely in the country.
In addition, the local crypto exchanges, which were operating in Nigeria, have had to lose access to their bank accounts. The access was denied by the banks because they were directed by the Central Bank to do so. The situation in Nigeria regarding crypto is still the same as the Government and Central Bank of Nigeria are not in favor of crypto.
