Tanzania’s central bank is considering a reversal of the crypto ban, following a positive speech made by President Samia Suluhu Hassan on cryptocurrencies and the need to look into them.
The Bank of Tanzania is apparently moving to lift its prohibition on bitcoin in the wake of the country’s president’s favorable remarks on the subject.
Tanzania’s central bank has began working on orders from the country’s federal government, according to Reuters, which might result in the country’s November 2019 crypto prohibition being lifted.
President Hassan, as previously reported by Cointelegraph, ordered the central bank to begin investigating Bitcoin (BTC) and other digital assets earlier this month.
Given the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies at the time, Hassan urged the Bank of Tanzania to catch up with the times.
These positive crypto comments followed El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law and a wave of favorable Bitcoin sentiment across numerous Latin American countries.
However, beyond central bank restrictions, crypto-related rules have yet to develop in Africa. Nigeria’s central bank also restricted financial institutions in the country from serving cryptocurrency exchanges in February.
The move, according to Abdulmajid Nsekela, chairman of the Tanzania Bankers Association, could help diversify the country’s financial operations, which are currently dominated by cash payments.
“The most challenging element for regulators is to be caught by surprise by innovations,” Nsekela said, echoing the president’s remarks regarding the Bank of Tanzania’s need to gain a deeper understanding of the crypto market.
Tanzania ranks seventh in peer-to-peer BTC trading volume in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to statistics from Useful Tulips, a website that records peer-to-peer BTC trading around the world.
Nigeria continues to account for more than half of all Bitcoin trading activity in the area.
While the continent has yet to see concrete crypto legislation, some countries are striving to develop floating central bank digital currencies.
However, both Nigeria’s and Ghana’s central banks made pronouncements to that effect in June.
