Nigeria Ramps Up Crypto Surveillance: National IDs and Tax Records Now Track Digital Asset Transactions

Forget offshore accounts and numbered wallets—Nigeria's financial watchdogs just plugged their system directly into the crypto ledger.

The New Paper Trail

The directive is blunt: link every crypto transaction to a verifiable National Identification Number and its associated tax profile. It turns pseudonymous blockchain addresses into tagged financial entities overnight. The goal isn't subtle—authorities want a clear line from every satoshi traded back to a citizen's legal identity.

Why the Sudden Scrutiny?

This move follows a global trend of tightening regulations, but Nigeria's approach is uniquely integrated. By merging digital identity with tax records, the government creates a single, searchable financial profile for every participant. It’s a powerful tool for compliance—and an unprecedented level of oversight for a market built on decentralization.

The Compliance Calculus

Exchanges and platforms now face a stark choice: integrate fully with the national identity database or risk being locked out of one of Africa's most active crypto economies. For users, the trade-off is familiar—convenience and legitimacy versus the original promise of anonymous, borderless finance. Some will see it as a necessary step toward mainstream adoption; others will call it the death of crypto's core ethos.

The Bottom Line

Nigeria isn't just watching crypto anymore—it's demanding a seat at every transaction. This level of integration makes tax evasion harder and illicit flows easier to trace, but it also centralizes control in a system designed to avoid exactly that. For traditional finance skeptics, it's a satisfying 'I told you so' moment—proof that even the most disruptive technologies eventually get a government invoice.

Linking National IDs to Crypto Transfers – Here’s Why

The West African nation has mandated crypto exchanges and service providers to collect and report their clients’ TINs and NINs, expanding its identity tracing system to the crypto ecosystem.

TIN is a unique identification number issued by the Nigerian Revenue Service and the Joint Tax Commission to track tax compliance and enforcement of individuals and businesses. Meanwhile, NIN links personal identification information to biometric data such as fingerprints and face-scanners in the national identity database.

Nigeria has passed a new tax law linking crypto transactions to identities via Tax Identification Numbers (TIN) and National Identity Numbers (NIN), ensuring traceability for tax purposes without compromising blockchain security. VASP are required to collect user details…

With the current tax law, authorities can track crypto flows from exchanges to individuals and reported income. This is done without building complex blockchain surveillance infrastructure, it noted.

Nigeria’s financial regulator announced last year that it is considering a bill to include crypto taxation in its regulatory framework.

Besides, Nigeria’s approach aligns with developments under the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), an OECD initiative for global tax transparency.

Nigeria Leads in Crypto Adoption

Nigeria has become one of Africa’s top cryptocurrency adopters again, per Chainalysis’ 2025 Global Adoption Index. The nation’s crypto market is estimated to have gained $92.1 billion in value between July 2024 and June 2025.

Furthermore, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has recently formed a new task force to explore the adoption of stablecoins. The MOVE comes amid sluggish adoption of the country’s digital currency, the eNaira, and growing public skepticism toward its performance.