A financial analyst is warning that Ghana’s new digital asset law risks creating regulatory confusion by splitting oversight among multiple agencies with potentially overlapping mandates.
Dr. Richmond Atuahene, a financial and banking expert, says the Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, 2025 (Act 1154) — signed into law in December 2025 — contains what he terms a regulatory dichotomy that could undermine its effectiveness if jurisdictional boundaries are not clearly operationalised.
Under the framework, the Bank of Ghana (BoG) holds primary responsibility for licensing and supervising virtual asset service providers, with Ghana’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) serving as joint regulator. The Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) is the third agency in the arrangement, with BoG, SEC and FIC having agreed that virtual assets can no longer remain outside Ghana’s financial regulatory purview.
The risk Dr. Atuahene identifies lies in asset classification. A digital token that one regulator treats as a security may be classified by another as a payment instrument or a digital commodity. Those differing interpretations can leave businesses uncertain about which regulator’s rules govern their product, which licensing process applies, and what standards they must meet to operate legally.
The United States has confronted the same structural problem, with its Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission locked in a prolonged dispute over whether certain crypto assets should be treated as securities or commodities. That disagreement generated years of legal uncertainty, regulatory disputes and chilling effects on investment in the sector. Dr. Atuahene argues Ghana risks importing similar complications unless responsibilities are clearly assigned from the start.
Ghana’s digital asset market gives the regulatory stakes real weight. The country recorded over $10 billion in cryptocurrency transactions by November 2025, up from roughly $6 billion the year before. An estimated three million Ghanaians participate in the ecosystem.
Early implementation has already produced evidence of the coordination challenge. In February 2026, the BoG and SEC issued a joint directive ordering all virtual asset service providers to halt public advertising, including those already inside the BoG’s regulatory sandbox. The directive cited the VASP Act but acknowledged that detailed advertising rules had not yet been published. It was the first visible enforcement action under a legislative framework that was less than two months old.
Ghana’s own regulators have already proposed the solution Dr. Atuahene is calling for. The BoG’s policy position document on virtual assets recommends that the bank oversee activities related to payments, custody and any activity with implications for monetary policy and financial stability; that the SEC oversee the offering, trading and investment of virtual assets; and that the FIC oversee money laundering and terrorism financing compliance in coordination with the BoG and SEC, with its enforcement powers exercised in accordance with their directions. If implemented as written, that division would address the structural concerns Dr. Atuahene raises. His warning is that policy documents and operational practice do not always move at the same pace.
Full licensing under Act 1154 was not yet operational as of early 2026, with existing providers operating under transitional arrangements while the licensing window remained unopened. That transition period, between law passage and the full licensing regime coming into effect, is precisely when regulatory ambiguity carries the highest cost for businesses trying to plan and invest.
For Dr. Atuahene, Ghana’s decision to regulate digital assets is the right direction. Whether it delivers clarity or compounds uncertainty will depend on whether the regulatory boundaries written into policy documents translate into consistent, coordinated action on the ground.
