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.
To understand how Treasury and the Reserve Bank's new draft crypto regulations fit into South Africa's currency framework, know this: they only replace a single piece of the puzzle.
These draft regulations do not rewrite the Currency and Exchanges Act of 1933. Instead, they are being introduced under Section 9(1) of that Act, entirely replacing the outdated 1961 Exchange Control Regulations with the Capital Flow Management Regulations of 2026.
CATCH UP Truth or hysteria: Sifting Treasury's sweeping new draft crypto regulations May 1, 2026 So the draft Crypto Asset Manual -- which was unleashed on the unsuspecting public on Monday, 3 August -- acts as a practical cross-border implementation guide to complement these regulations.
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A serious plot hole
The regulations propose strict limits on transactions above a certain value. Crucially, however, the actual monetary value of this threshold is left entirely blank in the draft text, to be deferred to future gazettes.
This makes it impossible to fully assess the real-world economic impact and has fuelled a litany of libertarian-flavoured LinkedIn posts.
Why? Because above this undefined threshold, transactions (read: buying groceries or electricity) cannot occur...
