From the desk of Joe Rossi …
As we wait for TBAS’s upcoming podcast about our partner company Blockstation, major global news has been dropped about their work in Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa.
Blockstation is a company that provides international stock exchanges and their broker-dealer networks with an efficient, blockchain-enabled solution for listing, trading, clearing, and settlement of security tokens, Bitcoin, and other digital assets.
The Blockstation solution includes end-to-end functionality for all other stakeholders, including the depository, broker-dealers, issuers, investors and regulators to provide liquidity and security in full compliance with regulatory standards set by financial institutions throughout the capital market sphere.
Nigeria’s NASD OTC Exchange (NASD) has announced it will launch a new Digital Securities Platform, the first in Africa, through its Master Agreement with Blockstation. This announcement came only a month after Nigeria’s SEC published its Digital Assets Rulebook, which itself was developed in part through the collaboration between Blockstation and NASD.
NASD anticipates that the Blockstation platform will help issuers raise funds, tokenize assets, and connect with investors worldwide faster and more efficiently than traditional workflows.
This news follows a successful trading pilot with Blockstation one year ago involving NASD as well as several of the Nigeria’s top banks and brokers, which tested its platform’s ability to sustain workflows in compliance with KYC/AML and other rules.
NASD Managing Director and CEO Bola Ajomale is optimistic about this partnership, saying, “[Blockstation’s] cutting-edge technology furthers NASD’s mission to enable economic development in Africa through consistent innovation, fulfilling our commitment to our stakeholders and the Nigerian economy at large.”
The largest amount of cryptocurrency transactions outside the United States are done by Nigerians, although one-third of the population does not have access to traditional financial services. There are hopes that the adoption of a formal digital asset rulebook for cryptocurrencies and tokenized securities, as well as compliant trading systems like Blockstation, will lower barriers to financial inclusion for these individuals.
Nigeria’s Chief of Exchange, Temi Popoola, says, “For a lot of young and upcoming Nigerians, that is the kind of technology they adopt and we want to see how we can deploy it to grow our market.”
Check out our Podcast with Blockstation for a discussion about this move and more about the future of Blockchain.
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Sources
“Nigeria’s NASD OTC plans digital securities exchange” – CNBC Africa https://www.cnbcafrica.com/media/6307730025112/
“Nigerian Bourse to Adopt Blockchain for Settling Trades by 2023” – Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-10/nigerian-bourse-to-adopt-blockchain-for-settling-trades-by-2023
“Nigeria’s NASD to Deploy Digital Securities Market by Leveraging Blockstation Platform Following SEC Rulebook” – Yahoo https://www.yahoo.com/now/nigerias-nasd-deploy-digital-securities-120000836.html