Quidax, a provisionally-licenced Nigerian crypto startup, has shut down its peer-to-peer (P2P) trading feature just five months after launch, signaling the growing tension between crypto innovation and regulatory enforcement in Africa’s largest economy.
In an emailed notice to customers, Quidax said the decision to discontinue its P2P marketplace, including merchant ads, escrow services, and in-platform chats, was part of a strategic shift toward ‘higher-demand features’ like instant swaps and order-book trading.
Core services such as deposits, withdrawals, and spot trading will continue unaffected.
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Why P2P Was Controversial
P2P trading, where users buy and sell crypto directly with one another, has been a staple of Nigeria’s digital asset economy, often used to on-and off-ramp Naira outside traditional exchange rails. But regulators have increasingly flagged the model as a supervisory challenge.
The Securities and Exchange Commission of Nigeria (SEC Nigeria) has publicly raised concerns about:
Opaque transaction flows
Exchange-rate manipulation, and
The dominance of foreign P2P platforms operating in regulatory grey zones.
This has made formal oversight difficult and heightened investor-protection risks.
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Quidax’s P2P feature was built to address those concerns by restricting merchant status to verified users subjected to strict KYC, enhanced authentication, and participation requirements. But even this controlled model appears to have sat uneasily within SEC Nigeria’s evolving enforcement posture.
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Regulatory Backdrop: Sandbox Stalls, Rules Tighten
Quidax is part of SEC Nigeria’s Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme (ARIP), a sandbox designed to guide digital-asset firms toward full licencing. The programme was expected to transition participants like Quidax and rival Nigerian exchange, Busha, to full licences by August 2025, but that timeline has stalled as the regulator reassesses its supervisory capacity.
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At the same time, SEC Nigeria has updated capital-requirement thresholds under the Investment and Securities Act, 2025, classifying digital assets as securities and subjecting service providers to the regulator’s capital markets framework. Although detailed rules for P2P platforms haven’t yet been published, standalone intermediaries and multi-service operators now face minimum capital requirements in the hundreds of millions of Naira.
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Quidax’s decision underscores a broader reality: even when exchanges build P2P systems with strong controls, regulatory uncertainty can outweigh product demand.
In this case, Quidax noted that most users preferred faster, more traditional trading methods, a trend that has likely influenced the product roadmap.
For the Nigerian market, this development may tighten liquidity in informal channels and accelerate migration toward regulated on-and off-ramping options. It also reinforces the SEC’s message that crypto services must fit within the capital markets ecosystem if they are to scale.
As the regulatory framework continues to take shape, operators and users alike will be watching closely to see how other P2P-dependent products evolve.
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