EBC Financial Group says fears over Nigeria’s stablecoin use are valid, but the real risk is limited recourse if issuers fail, not lost currency control
Nigeria’s stablecoin debate, over digital tokens designed to hold a steady value matched to the US dollar, is being argued with numbers from 2023 and 2024, even though the currency has since done the opposite of what the warnings predicted. EBC Financial Group (EBC) finds the $59 billion figure driving most coverage is over two years old, and a more current count from Chainalysis puts the real number higher, not lower. Since the warnings were raised, the naira has strengthened by about 8%, reserves have hit a seventeen-year high, and official remittances have risen sharply. Some of that demand for dollar tokens has been created by Nigeria’s own foreign exchange rules. The bigger risk is not that Nigeria loses control of its currency. It is that Nigerians holding these tokens have very little protection if the issuers fail.
David Precious, Senior Market Analyst at EBC Financial Group, said, “The stablecoin story in Nigeria is being told with two-year-old numbers. If tokens were really displacing the naira, we can expect a weaker currency and draining reserves, not the opposite. The bigger question one should ask is what protection Nigerians have if these token companies run into trouble.”
The Number is Old, not Small
Correcting the $59 billion figure does not make the picture smaller. Chainalysis puts Nigeria’s crypto-related inflows at more than $92.1 billion for the year to June 2025, comfortably above the older number still being quoted. What changes is the interpretation, not the direction. Most of those total counts value every time it moves between digital wallets, sometimes several times over for the same money, rather than dollars that have permanently left Nigeria’s economy. Even the IMF has said its own measurement of this remains imperfect, and that the data behind its Nigeria assessment only ran through January 2025.
The Naira Moved the Other Way
The naira’s own record argues against the simple version of this story. Central Bank Governor Olayemi Cardoso told the Senate that the naira appreciated 7.95% in the first half of 2026, with reserves reaching $52.73 billion by early July and remaining near a seventeen-year high through mid-August, about 28% above a year earlier. Official diaspora remittances, he said, rose from about $200 million to more than $600 million a month. If dollar tokens were genuinely displacing the naira, the expected pattern would be a weaker currency, falling reserves and remittances leaving official channels. All three moved the other way, and oil revenue and foreign exchange reform did most of that work.
Nigeria’s Own Rules Fed the Demand
Some of that demand is self-inflicted. The IMF itself points to Nigeria’s foreign exchange restrictions as a reason stablecoins have grown more attractive. A central bank rule that took effect in May 2026 now requires money transfer operators to pay incoming remittances into naira accounts first, so a Nigerian receiving money from abroad gets naira, not dollars, at the point of entry. Manufacturers felt a similar squeeze: only around half of their requests for official foreign exchange were met in the third quarter of 2025, and the sector lost close to 19,000 jobs over the same period. For a company that has to pay an overseas supplier, this is not a question about cryptocurrency. It is a question about getting hold of dollars when the formal system cannot guarantee it.
The Real Risk Sits with the Issuers
The more serious risk is that a Nigerian holding these tokens is really holding a promise from one of just two companies, since research from the Bank for International Settlements finds USDT and USDC account for more than 95% of all stablecoins in existence. That promise carries no protection from the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation and no backstop from the central bank if either company runs into trouble. State-led alternatives have not closed that gap either: the central bank’s own eNaira has processed only about 22 billion naira since 2021, versus roughly 96 trillion naira moved by Nigeria’s ordinary bank transfer system in a single month in 2025. People adopt a payment method because it solves a problem for them, not because a government builds one.
Precious added, “There is a genuine risk here, but it isn’t that Nigeria loses control of its currency overnight. It is that ordinary households may be holding claims against two offshore companies, with very little way to get their money back if something goes wrong. Nigerians will choose the naira again when it’s worth holding, not because the alternative is banned.”
