South Africa’s Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has said the country will rewrite its draft crypto rules.
Thousands of public comments, he said, made it clear that a different approach was needed. Delivering the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, he promised fresh consultations and a revised second draft but gave no date.
The National Treasury published the draft Capital Flow Management Regulations in April 2026. They would replace the 1961 Exchange Control Regulations and also pull cross-border crypto transfers into the same net as other capital movements.
Breaches could cost up to R1 million ($60,000), five years in prison, or both. The industry could live with that. The Crypto Assets Manual, which followed in August, was harder to swallow.
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The manual would have stopped businesses from making cross-border crypto payments and banned transfers to and from non-custodial wallets, which critics read as a ban on self-custody. It would also have cut South Africans off from decentralised finance.
Additionally, owners above a set amount would have to declare their holdings and could be made to sell to the government for rand. Regulators promised to publish that figure in the manual. It reportedly never appeared.
The move has drawn responses from the industry, with Luno warning that the rules would make crypto costlier for ordinary people and push activity into channels with no oversight. VALR chief executive Farzam Ehsani pushed to scrap exchange controls or apply them without picking winners among technologies.
Godongwana did signal a change of method. The state, he said, should move away from pre-approvals and judge transactions on legitimacy and tax compliance. He also pointed to the Financial Stability Board as a guide for how crypto should be treated.
In February, Godongwana placed crypto inside the capital flow framework that has not changed. The Financial Sector Conduct Authority already treats crypto assets as financial products. Since 2025, the Financial Intelligence Centre has supervised crypto service providers as accountable institutions.