Is crypto legal in Senegal? Yes, in the sense that no law forbids you to buy, hold or sell bitcoin in Dakar or in Abidjan. But nothing protects you either. On 22 July 2026 the governor of the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO), Jean-Claude Kassi Brou, summed up the bank’s view in three short sentences. He spoke in French; in the English translation published by Ecofin Agency on 24 July, they read: “It is not a currency. It is not regulated. Therefore, be cautious.” The warning applies to eight countries, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire among them.
For crypto in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire, that gives a short answer with a few layers. Holding and trading are not banned. Running a crypto business requires a licence under a regional anti-money-laundering law of 2023, but no authority has yet set up the procedure to grant one. Tax follows the general rules, because neither country’s tax code mentions crypto. Below are the texts behind each point, as of October 2026.
It follows our lesson on Cameroon and the CEMAC zone, the other franc zone of Africa. The two zones look alike from far away, with a CFA franc pegged to the euro and a central bank that dislikes bitcoin, but they have different central banks, different texts and different tax codes. The CEMAC reminder below takes one paragraph. Everything else is about West Africa.
Eight countries, one franc, one central bank: why the BCEAO speaks for Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire
Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire belong to the West African Monetary Union (UMOA) and to the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), two overlapping treaties that group the same eight states: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo. The first deals with money and banks; the second with the common market, customs and tax harmonisation. Their shared currency is the West African CFA franc (XOF), issued by the BCEAO, headquartered in Dakar.
The franc is tied to the euro. The BCEAO’s own history of the CFA franc gives the parity: 655.957 francs for one euro since 1 January 1999. That fixed rate matters for anyone who holds crypto here, as we will see, because most crypto is priced in dollars and the local savings of a Dakar trader are, in practice, euros under another name.
Because monetary policy is regional, a Senegalese or Ivorian minister cannot decide alone that bitcoin is money. That question belongs to the BCEAO and to the UMOA Council of Ministers. Each state keeps its own tax code, its own courts and its own financial intelligence unit, so tax and enforcement stay national.
The bank has never welcomed crypto. On 1 March 2018 Financial Afrik reported that the then governor, Tiémoko Meyliet Koné, told a conference in Abidjan that a currency needs a counterpart guaranteed by someone, that nobody answers for virtual currencies, and that the bank therefore could not recommend them to the public. Several blogs also cite a BCEAO communiqué of 2018 and a note of 2022 on crypto. We could not find either document on bceao.int, so we do not quote them.
A reminder for readers who come from the other zone: in Central Africa, Cameroon and five neighbours use the XAF franc of the BEAC, with COBAC as banking supervisor. Their rules on crypto, exchange controls and mobile money are in our lesson on the CEMAC zone. For the practical steps of buying crypto with mobile money or through peer-to-peer platforms across the continent, see our guide to buying crypto in Africa. Neither is repeated here.
What the BCEAO said in 2026: not a currency, not regulated, a committee at work
The year 2026 is the first in which the BCEAO talked about crypto at length in public. On 8 May 2026 it held an international conference in Dakar on crypto-assets and digital innovation. The bank’s announcement of the conference listed four themes: digital innovation, stablecoins and monetary policy, regulation with prudential supervision and regional cooperation, and cybersecurity with data protection, followed by a round table of central-bank governors.
Opening the conference, Brou called for more vigilance. According to the Senegalese press agency APS, he said: “blockchain that runs exactly as written when it is called, holding and moving funds according to its code, without an intermediary able to change the outcome.">smart contract holding reserves of two or more tokens, supplied by users, that a decentralized exchange uses to execute trades automatically at a price set by a formula.">pool diverge, compared with simply holding the same tokens in a wallet. It becomes permanent when the provider withdraws.">Il faut une vigilance accrue, notamment au regard de la forte volatilité des crypto-actifs” (stronger vigilance is needed, in particular given the high volatility of crypto-assets). The risks he named were volatility, the cross-border nature of these assets, cybersecurity, consumer protection, and money laundering and terrorist financing. He also said the BCEAO had started work to support the digital transformation of the region’s financial sector.
The bank then created a committee. Press reports from July 2026, including Ecofin Agency on 24 July, say that Brou announced at the May conference a committee called C-CRYPTO, charged with drafting crypto rules for the union, and that the framework is being prepared with the regional market regulator, the AMF-UMOA. At the governors’ round table on 8 May, Brou also said that “un comité qui est en place, qui travaille” (a committee is in place and working) would make proposals, according to L’Économiste du Faso. We did not find a BCEAO text that sets up C-CRYPTO or names its members; everything known about it comes from the governor’s remarks as the press reported them.
The 22 July 2026 press conference, held when the bank presented its 2025 annual report, added the line quoted at the top of this page and three more points. No timeline was given for the rules. Stablecoins were described, in Ecofin’s translation, as “another dynamic” raising different questions, discussed within the Association of African Central Banks, with no decision taken. And, according to Financial Afrik on 23 July 2026, the bank said a roadmap on crypto regulation is being drafted, while its study of a central bank digital currency has led to no decision to deploy one. Brou’s words on that point: a central bank digital currency “ne se met pas en place du jour au lendemain” (is not set up overnight).
Nothing in these 2026 statements bans crypto or names an exchange as authorised. A law lecturer and consultant, Péléni Jonathan Aimé Koné, writing in Financial Afrik on 26 August 2026 put it plainly: the union still has no complete regulatory regime specific to crypto-assets.
The 2023 uniform law: a licence is required, but nobody issues it yet
The only regional text that names crypto businesses is not a crypto law. It is the uniform law on the fight against money laundering, terrorist financing and the financing of proliferation, adopted for the UMOA member states on 31 March 2023 and published by the BCEAO. A uniform law is a model text that each state must then adopt as national law, word for word in its key parts.
Article 1 of the law defines a virtual asset as a digital representation of value that can be exchanged or transferred digitally, excluding digital forms of fiat money, securities and other financial assets that already have their own rules. It then defines the virtual asset service provider, known in French as PSAV (prestataire de services d’actifs virtuels). A PSAV is any person who, as a business and on behalf of clients, does at least one of five things:
- exchanges virtual assets against fiat currency;
- exchanges one virtual asset for another;
- transfers virtual assets from one address or account to another;
- keeps or administers virtual assets, or the keys that control them, for clients;
- takes part in or provides services linked to an issuer’s offer or sale of a virtual asset.
These five activities copy the list used by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the international standard-setter on money laundering. Under them, a centralised exchange, a custodial wallet and a professional peer-to-peer dealer all count as PSAVs. A person who buys bitcoin for themselves does not.
Article 58 then sets the rule: nobody may carry on the business of a virtual asset service provider without prior approval or authorisation from the competent authority. Article 59 adds that PSAVs must apply the law’s preventive measures, such as customer identification (KYC) and reporting suspicious transactions, and that the specific requirements and sanctions are to be set by the competent authorities. PSAVs are therefore listed among the entities subject to the law, next to banks and money changers.
The gap is in that last sentence. The law does not say which authority licenses a PSAV, what file to submit or what capital to hold. We found no BCEAO instruction or national decree that fills it in for Senegal or Côte d’Ivoire. The result is a strange position for any company that wants to serve customers in Dakar or Abidjan: the law says a licence is required, and no counter exists where one can be obtained.
How the two countries adopted the law
Côte d’Ivoire transposed the text by Ordinance No. 2023-875 of 23 November 2023, published by the national financial intelligence unit CENTIF. It contains the same definition of a PSAV and the same Article 58. Senegal followed with Law No. 2024-08 of 14 February 2024 on money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing, which amends its 2018 law, according to the daily Le Soleil. We did not open the text in the Journal officiel, so we rely on the uniform law for its content.
Senegal off the FATF grey list, Côte d’Ivoire still on it
The FATF keeps a list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring, often called the grey list. Senegal was on it from 2021 and came off at the plenary that ended on 25 October 2024, as Bloomberg reported that day. Côte d’Ivoire was added at that same plenary. In its statement of 19 June 2026, the latest one published as of this writing, the FATF still lists Côte d’Ivoire, but found that the country had substantially completed its action plan and warranted an on-site visit, the step that usually comes before removal. Senegal is not on the June 2026 list.
The grey list is why the BCEAO treats crypto first as a money-laundering question. “Certains de nos pays sont sur la liste grise” (some of our countries are on the grey list), Brou told the May round table, according to L’Économiste du Faso. For a user, the effect is practical: foreign banks and payment firms apply extra checks to grey-listed countries, so a transfer from an exchange abroad to an account in Abidjan is more likely to be questioned. The FATF holds its next plenary in October 2026; its new list had not been published when we checked on 26 October 2026.
Crypto in Senegal: no crypto statute, and a catch-all clause in the tax code
Senegal has no law on crypto-assets. We found none in the legislative texts, and the Senegalese tax administration (DGID) publishes no guidance on crypto. The General Tax Code as consolidated in January 2025 does not contain the words crypto, virtual asset or virtual currency anywhere in its text. The 2026 finance law was not available in full on the DGID site, so we could not check it word by word; no official text that we found changes the picture.
That silence does not mean crypto profits are tax-free. It means the ordinary rules apply, and the ordinary rules have a broad net.
The tax code’s net: “sources of profit” not taxed elsewhere
Senegal levies a single income tax on the worldwide income of people tax-resident in the country (Articles 47 and 48 of the code). Residence depends on where you have your home or main stay, your main professional activity or the centre of your economic interests.
Article 156 then lists what is taxed as non-commercial profits (BNC). Among them: income from any occupation, lucrative activity or source of profit that does not belong to another category of income. The same article gives two examples, gains on the sale of securities and company rights, and stock-market operations carried out habitually or speculatively. Crypto is not named. But a regular trader’s profits are a plausible fit for that clause, and so are gains from frequent speculative trading. This is our reading of the text, not a position of the tax office: we found no doctrine and no court decision on crypto in Senegal.
If you buy and resell crypto as a real commercial business, for example as a peer-to-peer merchant who buys USDT and resells it to clients every day, the more likely category is industrial and commercial profits (BIC, Articles 117 and following), with the bookkeeping duties of a business.
One trap: the code applies a 25% withholding on certain securities gains, but only when the profits are made through a company or fund manager based in Senegal. Crypto bought on a foreign exchange does not pass through such an intermediary, so that 25% does not apply. In other cases the code requires you to declare the income yourself.
The income tax scale in Senegal
Profits taxed as BNC or BIC are added to your other income and taxed on the progressive scale of Article 173, set by Law No. 2022-19 of 27 May 2022. PwC’s tax summary for Senegal, reviewed on 7 August 2026, gives the same 43% top rate. The euro values below are rounded, using the fixed parity.
| Annual taxable income (FCFA) | About (euros) | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 630,000 | 0 to 960 | 0% |
| 630,001 to 1,500,000 | 960 to 2,290 | 20% |
| 1,500,001 to 4,000,000 | 2,290 to 6,100 | 30% |
| 4,000,001 to 8,000,000 | 6,100 to 12,200 | 35% |
| 8,000,001 to 13,500,000 | 12,200 to 20,580 | 37% |
| 13,500,001 to 50,000,000 | 20,580 to 76,220 | 40% |
| above 50,000,000 | above 76,220 | 43% |
Source: Senegal General Tax Code, Article 173, January 2025 edition. This is a simplified view: income is first divided by family shares (the quotient familial), and abatements apply, so two people with the same profit can owe very different amounts. A worked example would mislead without your family situation. For the general method of working out a gain, sale by sale, see how to calculate crypto capital gains; for the principles behind taxing crypto anywhere, see our crypto tax basics.
Akon City: the crypto city that was never built
Senegal’s best-known crypto story is not a law but a project. The singer Akon announced in 2018 a city on the Atlantic coast south of Dakar that would run on his own token, Akoin, and finalised a deal with the government in 2020 for an 800-hectare site at Mbodiène, billed at USD 6 billion. Little was built. In July 2025 the head of the state tourism developer SAPCO told the BBC that “the Akon City project no longer exists”, and Senegal took back most of the land for a scaled-back resort, as Dezeen reported on 15 July 2025. Akon himself conceded that Akoin had not been managed properly. The token never needed a Senegalese licence, and its holders had no regulator to turn to.
Côte d’Ivoire: the same regional rules, and no crypto article in the 2026 tax annex
Côte d’Ivoire’s position mirrors Senegal’s. No law deals with crypto as such. The only national text that names virtual asset service providers is the anti-money-laundering ordinance of November 2023, which requires them to hold a licence that no authority yet issues. Crypto is not legal tender, because only the BCEAO’s franc is.
On the market side, the regional regulator for securities, formerly CREPMF and now AMF-UMOA, would be the natural authority for crypto investment offers to the public. Secondary sources mention a communiqué of 2021 in which it treated some crypto offers as public calls for savings. We could not open that document, so we do not rely on it.
What the 2026 finance law says, and does not say
The 2026 budget law, Law No. 2025-987 of 19 December 2025, comes with a tax annex that changes the General Tax Code for 2026. We searched its full text: it does not mention crypto-assets, cryptocurrencies or virtual assets. Two digital measures in it can confuse readers, and neither concerns crypto holders:
- a tax on foreign online platforms that sell services in Côte d’Ivoire, at 30% of a deemed profit equal to 10% of their Ivorian turnover, for platforms above FCFA 50 million of turnover;
- three-year tax exemptions for labelled digital start-ups, under the start-up law of 23 November 2023.
The annex also adds valuation methods for Article 180 of the code, which taxes gains on direct sales of company shares. That article is about shares, not tokens.
Which rules apply to a crypto gain in Abidjan
Without a crypto rule, a crypto profit is taxed, if at all, under the general categories of the Ivorian code: commercial profits for someone who trades as a business, non-commercial profits for some other regular activities. Salaries follow their own rules, rewritten by Ordinance No. 2023-719 of 13 September 2023 and applied from 1 January 2024, as Deloitte’s law firm summarised; a trading profit is not a salary. We could not verify the current rates for non-salary income of individuals or the treatment of an occasional gain on an official Ivorian source, so we give no figure. Before filing, check the current code with the Direction générale des impôts (DGI) or a local tax adviser.
Some blogs claim the 2026 finance law lets the tax office reclassify crypto gains as commercial income above a set threshold. We found nothing of the kind in the official annex, and the blogs cite no article, so we treat the claim as unsupported.
How people use crypto in Dakar and Abidjan: mobile money, P2P and the risks
For most people in the two countries, the bank account is not the entry point. Mobile money is. How many accounts? The figures in circulation come from speeches reported by the press, not from a BCEAO statistic we could open. At the May 2026 round table the governor spoke of more than 280 million mobile-money accounts, and said electronic money had helped lift financial inclusion from 46% in 2016 to 76%, according to L’Économiste du Faso; Ecofin Agency reported the same 280 million figure from his July press conference. A consultant speaking at the same conference cited 248 million accounts in 2024, according to Financial Afrik. Accounts are not people: one person often holds several wallets, so neither number counts users.
Wave and Orange Money are the two names readers search for. On its website, checked on 26 October 2026, Wave says deposits, withdrawals and bill payments are free and that sending money costs 1%. It says nothing about crypto. Neither service sells bitcoin directly, as far as we found.
The usual route is peer to peer. A buyer finds a seller on a P2P marketplace or through a messaging group, pays in francs by Wave or Orange Money, and receives a stablecoin, most often USDT, in a wallet or exchange account. A seller does the reverse to cash out. The seller sets the price, and the gap between that price and the exchange rate on a large platform is the real cost of the trade; no official body publishes it, so compare several offers before you pay. Whether a given exchange’s P2P desk accepts XOF changes over time: check inside the app rather than trusting a list.
The obvious risk is the counterparty. A P2P trade relies on the other person confirming the payment, and a reversed or fake mobile-money transfer is a classic fraud. Banks are a second worry: a bank can question, delay or refuse transfers it cannot explain, and money linked to an unlicensed crypto trade is hard to explain. Consultants’ blogs describe accounts frozen after transfers from exchanges, but we found no data on how often it happens.
Less visible is the currency itself. USDT tracks the dollar, while the franc tracks the euro, so a Senegalese saver who swaps francs for USDT takes on the euro-dollar exchange rate even if the token holds its peg. Our guide to what stablecoins are explains how those pegs work and fail.
Scammers use the absence of rules. A message circulating in Senegal in September 2025 claimed that the finance ministry was launching crypto “investment sessions” with high returns, recruited over WhatsApp. We could not confirm any such programme, and a ministry does not recruit investors that way. Before sending money to any platform, read our guides on how to avoid crypto scams and on fake crypto investment platforms. Because no PSAV is licensed in the union, no local regulator will answer if a platform disappears with your deposit.
One more practical point. The UEMOA has foreign-exchange rules for transfers out of the zone, and moving francs to a foreign exchange is, in substance, a transfer abroad. We did not review those rules for this lesson; ask your bank what it requires before moving large amounts.
If you live in the US or the UK and have ties to Senegal or Côte d’Ivoire
Many readers of this page live in New York, Washington, London or Paris and send money home. For them, the home country’s rules come second. US citizens and US tax residents are taxed on their worldwide income, crypto included, under the rules in our guide to crypto taxes in the United States. A bank account or a Wave wallet in Dakar or Abidjan is a foreign financial account: if all your foreign accounts together exceed USD 10,000 at any time in the year, the IRS requires an FBAR report (FinCEN Form 114), due on 15 April with an automatic extension to 15 October. The IRS FBAR page is silent on crypto held on foreign exchanges, so ask a preparer about those.
There is no income tax treaty between the United States and either country: neither appears in the IRS list of US tax treaties, last reviewed on 3 January 2026. A US person who pays tax in Senegal on a gain must rely on the foreign tax credit rather than a treaty.
UK residents are in a different position. The United Kingdom has a double taxation convention with Senegal, in force since 30 March 2016, and a convention with Côte d’Ivoire in force since 24 January 1987. HMRC taxes crypto gains of UK residents under capital gains tax, as set out in our guide to crypto taxes in the United Kingdom. France also has tax treaties with both countries, signed in Abidjan on 6 April 1966 with Côte d’Ivoire and on 29 March 1974 with Senegal, which matters for the large diaspora there.
Families often use USDT as a remittance channel: buy in London or New York, send the token, and let a relative sell it for francs by Wave or Orange Money. Whether that costs less than a money-transfer company depends on the price the local buyer offers, which varies from trade to trade, and the recipient carries the P2P risks described above. On the sender’s side, giving or selling the tokens can itself be a taxable disposal under US or UK rules: check the guide for your country before you send.
What may change next: C-CRYPTO, stablecoins and the FATF in October
The first date to watch is whatever comes out of the C-CRYPTO committee and the roadmap the BCEAO says it is drafting with the AMF-UMOA. When rules come, they will be regional, for all eight states at once, and they should at last name the authority that grants the Article 58 licence. No date has been given, and we do not guess one.
Stablecoins are a separate track. The governor treated them as a separate question in July 2026, discussed with other African central banks. Any rule on dollar stablecoins will matter more to ordinary users than rules on bitcoin, because USDT is what moves on the mobile-money P2P route.
For Côte d’Ivoire, the FATF matters too. The country has substantially completed its action plan, in the FATF’s words, and awaits an on-site visit; removal from the grey list can only come after that visit. The FATF’s October 2026 statement will show where the process stands.
Until then the practical position is the one the governor gave in July: not a currency, not regulated, be careful. Keep records of every purchase and sale in francs, declare profits under the general rules, and treat any platform that claims a licence in the UEMOA with suspicion, since none can hold one yet. A later lesson of this course looks at blockchain and crypto across Africa as a whole.
