Ghana is racing to establish formal cryptocurrency regulations by the end of December, a move that highlights a broader scramble across Africa to control a booming digital asset market that is operating largely in a regulatory vacuum. The push, however, is fraught with something of a paradox as the central bank moves ahead with building a legal framework for a multi-billion dollar industry before it has built the team to enforce it .
The West African nation's central bank governor, Johnson Asiama, confirmed the timeline on the sidelines of the International Monetary Funds meetings in Washington, stating that a bill is on its way to parliament.
He acknowledged that the Bank of Ghana is late in the game and is now urgently developing the expertise and forming a new department to oversee the sector. This regulatory void exists in a market of significant scale between July 2023 and June 2024, Ghanaians traded over USD 3 B in cryptocurrency, with an estimated 3 million people, or nearly 9 of the population, participating.
