Digitnomics 
Nigeria’s growing digital asset market may need stronger real-time surveillance tools as cryptocurrency trading, tokenised assets and retail participation continue to expand.
The need has become more apparent following South Korea’s move to upgrade its virtual asset market surveillance system with artificial intelligence and machine learning.
South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) has enhanced its Virtual Asset Trading Analysis System (VISTA) to identify suspicious trading patterns across multiple exchanges.
The system uses AI to analyse market activity and flag potential manipulation, including coordinated price movements and unusual trading behaviour.
When the system detects a sharp or abnormal price movement, its generative AI component can analyse exchange announcements, market disclosures and news reports to determine whether there is a legitimate reason for the movement.
It can also analyse digital conversations, including online message boards, investment communities and video content, to identify possible coordinated manipulation, paid promotions and other suspicious activities.
Why this matters for Nigeria
Nigeria’s digital asset regulatory framework has evolved significantly in recent years.
The Investments and Securities Act 2025 formally brought digital assets into the country’s securities regulatory framework, while the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has continued to expand its regulatory engagement with virtual asset service providers through its Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme (ARIP).
As the market develops, however, regulating who enters the market may no longer be enough.
Real-time monitoring of what happens after platforms and digital asset businesses begin operating could become increasingly important.
Nigeria’s cryptocurrency market is also heavily influenced by social media and online communities. Trading discussions and investment signals regularly spread through platforms such as Telegram, WhatsApp and X.
While these communities can improve access to information, they can also be exploited to create artificial demand around an asset before traders behind the scheme sell their holdings.
This creates a significant risk for retail investors who may enter a market after a price has already been artificially pushed higher.
Nigeria does not need to copy South Korea
Nigeria does not necessarily need to replicate South Korea’s infrastructure or immediately invest in large-scale computing systems.
However, the principle behind the approach could be relevant to Nigeria: market surveillance needs to keep pace with the speed of digital asset trading.
Manual investigations and reports submitted after suspicious transactions may not always be sufficient in a market where prices can move dramatically within minutes.
The SEC could potentially use the ARIP framework to encourage stronger integration of automated surveillance systems among digital asset platforms.
Regulators could also explore partnerships with blockchain analytics and market surveillance companies rather than building every monitoring system internally.
Such systems could help regulators identify unusual trading volumes, coordinated transactions, abnormal price movements and other potential indicators of manipulation earlier.
The stakes could become bigger
The issue becomes even more important as tokenisation expands beyond cryptocurrencies.
If equities, debt instruments and other financial assets increasingly move onto blockchain-based platforms, manipulation could have consequences beyond speculative crypto trading.
A major manipulation incident involving tokenised financial assets could damage investor confidence and slow the adoption of digital capital markets.
For Nigeria, the opportunity is therefore not simply to regulate a growing crypto industry.
It is to build a regulatory infrastructure capable of monitoring increasingly digital financial markets before major problems become systemic.
South Korea’s experience offers Nigeria a useful lesson: as financial markets become faster and more automated, regulators may need technology that can move just as quickly.
