Kenya may be the first nation in the world where representatives of the industry create a cryptocurrency regulatory framework
Kenya may be the first nation in the world where representatives of the industry create the crypto regulatory framework. The National Assembly’s Departmental Committee on Finance and National Planning has instructed the Blockchain Association of Kenya (BAK) to draught the initial version of “what could become a virtual asset service provider’s bill.”
Representatives from BAK were invited by the Committee on Finance and National Planning to speak about the regulation of digital assets on October 31. Allan Kakai, the legal and policy director of BAK, gave the Mariblock local media the following information about the meeting:
“Basically, we are telling [the] parliament: ‘Look, Kenya has always branded itself as the Silicon Savannah; we are top three for digital assets [volume in Africa], and if we do not develop a clear licensing and regulatory framework, Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Mauritius would take the lead, and the capital flow that would have come to Kenya would have flocked elsewhere.”
The committee responded by giving the BAK two months to write the cryptocurrency bill. The committee merely states that it “urged the Association to undertake robust public education on cryptocurrency trade to demystify it” in the message posted on its official X (formerly Twitter) account.
Kenya unveiled the Financial Act 2023 in September 2023, requiring cryptocurrency exchanges to retain three percent “of the transfer or exchange value of the digital asset.” The BAK filed a complaint against the proposed crypto tax with the Kenyan High Court after its members were unable to convince the lawmakers not to approve it during their meeting in May.
The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, co-founded the contentious digital ID cryptocurrency project Worldcoin, which faced harsh criticism from Kenyan authorities. Citing concerns about the project’s harvesting of personal data, a parliamentary committee in Kenya’s government suggested that authorities close down the project’s activities in the nation.