ANALYSIS: Treasury’s backward-looking Draft Crypto Asset Manual fails to tell the full story
The Treasury’s draft crypto manual retrofits 1960s exchange controls onto digital assets, leaves threshold blanks and bans self‑custody transfers — risking South Africa’s Web3 access and the rand.
The Treasury's draft crypto asset manual, released on August 3, 2025, retrofits 1960s exchange controls onto digital assets, leaving crucial information blank and banning self-custody transfers. These draft regulations are merely replacing a single piece of the currency framework, not rewriting the Currency and Exchanges Act of 1933.
The manual serves as a practical guide for cross-border implementation with strict limits on transactions above a certain value, but the actual monetary value of this threshold remains unclear. Critics argue that this leaves the door open for speculation and limits the economic impact assessment. The regulations propose banning transactions with self-custody wallets, which could hinder South Africa's Web3 access and the rand.
The draft regulations are designed to trap capital inside South Africa, similar to the dual-rate system used during the apartheid era.
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