Zimbabwe is moving to control the cryptocurrency market
Zimbabwe’s government said on Friday that cryptocurrency companies will have to register and pay annual fees. The goal is to bring the mostly unregulated market under government control.
Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said that businesses that buy, sell, move, or store virtual assets must register with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) every year. The FIU is an anti-money laundering body that is part of the central bank.
Registration is now illegal without one, and it will cost $500 a year to do so.
How Crypto Is Used in Zimbabwe
These rules are Zimbabwe’s first specific rules for a sector that has mostly been operating illegally for a long time. In 2018, the government made it illegal for banks to trade cryptocurrency. This forced traders to use peer-to-peer sites and social media instead.
In the late 2000s, hyperinflation wiped out savings and retirement. People also lost faith in the banking system as a result of frequent currency fluctuations. These factors made people look for Bitcoin and other digital currencies as alternatives to traditional money as ways to store value and send money.
The most expensive way to send money is through banks, according to the World Bank’s Remittance Prices Worldwide study. Remittances have helped drive adoption.
The move by Zimbabwe is part of a larger global push to control cryptocurrencies after a string of high-profile exchange failures, fraud cases, and worries about money laundering.
It joins South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Mauritius as more African countries regulate digital assets. The move is because the use of cryptocurrencies is growing quickly across the region.
“This is a welcome development… It’s also good for traders that they don’t have to operate underground,” Jeffrey Mutambiranwa, a crypto trader in Harare, told Reuters. “Sub-Saharan Africa received more than $205 billion in on-chain value,” which is the total dollar value of cryptocurrency transactions recorded on blockchains, from July 2024 to June 2025. This is a 52% year-over-year increase.
