Author: Opeloyeru Batly

More than five years have passed since iCE3X entered voluntary liquidation. The case is still unresolved. Now the dispute over what happened to its assets is playing out in public. Gareth Grobler, the former sole director of iCE3X, has pushed back against the liquidators’ claims. They allege that more than R30 million in crypto assets remain unaccounted for. However, Grobler says he has never seen fully verified figures supporting that shortfall. His response came after liquidators Marthinus Breytenbach and Gottlieb Moabelo filed a court affidavit. They applied to the Master of the High Court for a further extension until 31…

Kenya’s Capital Markets Authority (CMA) plans to strengthen oversight of the country’s growing digital asset market. It wants to acquire a blockchain analytics platform that can track cryptocurrency transactions across more than 20 blockchain networks. The move marks one of the regulator’s first major enforcement actions since Kenya introduced the Virtual Assets Service Providers (VASP) Act. The CMA is not creating new restrictions. Instead, it wants to improve market oversight, support investigations, and strengthen compliance across licensed crypto businesses. Kenya Moves Toward Real-Time Blockchain Monitoring According to tender documents released by the CMA, the regulator is seeking a Virtual Assets…

The biggest barrier to crypto payment adoption has never been the technology. It has been the financial commitment businesses must make before knowing whether their customers will actually pay with crypto. ForgeLayer is addressing that directly. The non-custodial crypto payment infrastructure provider has introduced a pay-as-you-go pricing model, allowing businesses to start accepting cryptocurrency payments immediately and pay only when transactions come in. Instead of a fixed monthly subscription, businesses on the new plan are charged 0.3% per transaction, with no upfront cost required. What ForgeLayer Actually Does ForgeLayer builds the infrastructure that allows businesses to integrate crypto payment capabilities…

Nigeria already has an informal digital dollar economy. The question now is whether the rules will catch up with it. That is the central argument Monica.Cash is making publicly. The Lagos-based crypto-to-naira platform has published a financial analysis identifying the rapid emergence of informal digital dollar activity across Nigeria and calling on regulators and financial institutions to respond with frameworks that encourage innovation while protecting consumers. The analysis, backed by Monica.Cash’s own platform data across its 500,000-plus users, points to a market that has moved well beyond cryptocurrency adoption. Millions of Nigerians are now using dollar-backed digital assets (primarily USDT…

On 1 July 2026, the South African Revenue Service published its Draft Guide to the Taxation of Crypto Assets, opening it for public comment until 31 August 2026. The guide is not binding. However, it is the clearest signal yet of how SARS intends to treat crypto activity, and it arrives alongside enforcement infrastructure that is already live. The era of invisible crypto wealth in South Africa is over. What the Draft Guide Actually Covers The guide addresses the income tax consequences of a wide range of crypto activity. This includes selling crypto assets for rands, swapping one crypto asset…

The Democratic Republic of Congo is quietly becoming one of Africa’s most important testing grounds for the future of cross-border payments. And Visa is at the centre of it.In partnership with Onafriq, the pan-African payments network whose APIs connect M-Pesa, Airtel Money, and Orange Money wallets across the DRC, Visa has launched VisaPay, a platform that lets Congolese consumers fund Visa wallets directly from their mobile money accounts. What makes the initiative significant is what happens in the background. The transactions are settled in stablecoins. “There is a use case that we have in DR Congo where we are settling…

Something shifted in institutional finance today. On 2 July 2026, Standard Chartered became the first Global Systemically Important Bank to offer institutional USDC minting and redemption through a regulated banking channel. The service launched in partnership with Circle through Standard Chartered’s operations at the Dubai International Financial Centre. It is a first that matters. There are only 29 G-SIBs in the world. They are the banks that global regulators consider too critical to fail. When one of them becomes a direct gateway to minting and redeeming a dollar stablecoin, the conversation about stablecoins changes permanently. What the Service Actually Does…

For most Africans, investing in a property fund or private credit vehicle has never been realistic. The minimum amounts were too high. The barriers too many. However, Paga is now working to change that. On 30 June 2026, Paga announced a partnership with TBook to bring tokenised real-world assets to African users. TBook is a blockchain infrastructure startup based in New York. Together, they will connect Paga’s payments infrastructure with TBook’s asset marketplace. That marketplace runs on the Sui blockchain. So an everyday user in Lagos can now invest in fixed-income products and global assets directly from an app they…

Nigeria’s crypto gambling market is not a future projection. It is already happening and the numbers behind it are significant. Between July 2024 and June 2025, Nigeria received more than $92 billion in on-chain crypto value according to Chainalysis. Across Sub-Saharan Africa, the same period saw over $205 billion in on-chain cryptocurrency value received — a 52% year-on-year increase and the highest adoption growth rate of any global region. That financial backdrop is now bleeding directly into the gambling sector. Africa’s online gambling market is valued at $12.7 billion in 2026 and projected to reach $19.4 billion by 2030, according…

Nigeria’s and Rwanda’s crypto regulation partnership is now formal. The Capital Markets Authority of Rwanda and the Securities and Exchange Commission of Nigeria signed a cooperation agreement this week to deepen collaboration across capital markets and digital assets. The deal extends beyond traditional capital markets to include the oversight and development of digital asset frameworks in both countries. The timing is deliberate. Nigeria hosts one of Africa’s largest crypto ecosystems, estimated at approximately $92 billion. However, that scale has also made it a target. In 2025, the collapse of CBEX, a fraudulent digital asset scheme, resulted in hundreds of millions…