Kutlo Motseta
12th March 2025
Stanbic Bank Botswana hosted an event at Royal Aria, Tlokweng, in which experts discussed the growing virtual asset industry and the need to remain vigilant about cybercrime.
The conference was themed, “Virtual assets: Harnessing Virtual Assets for enhanced AML/CFT/Strategies: Navigating Opportunities and challenges.”.
“It is our strong belief that we must do everything to safe guard the integrity of the financial sector of which the country’s reputation is heavily dependent on. Whilst digital transformation is a key to an inclusive sustainable economic growth, it does come with significant risk … there are always bad players who are waiting to exploit the provision of gaps through technology, it’s everyone’s responsibility to frustrate such players at all costs”, said Chose Modise , Chief Executive Officer of Stanbic Botswana.
The market capitalization of the industry is set to sky rocket within a few years.
“Currently we are sitting on US$ 3 trillion dollars and looking to grow to about US$ 13 trillion in the next three years,” said head of licensing at Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority (NBFIRA) Ogona Tshoswane.
“This provides Botswana an immense opportunity for Botswana to leverage technology and expand financial access and foster international competitiveness. However, this opportunity must be met with responsibility. The rapid rise of virtual assets comes with new risks from cyber threats to financial crime vulnerability. When it comes to innovation technology you lead or get left behind. Virtual assets have potential to bridge financial gaps enabling greater participation in economy”, added Modise.
Regulators and law enforcement agencies are consistently dealing with cyber threats, though according to Sub Inspector Kerapetse Kebalano of Botswana Police Services, the country is yet to register any crypto crime cases.
“[Global] cyber-attacks have increased by 30% in 2024 with organizations facing an average of 1636 attacks per week,” said Modise
“Whilst virtual assets offer tremendous opportunities and inherent risks …. particularly in relation to money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud and illicit financial flows,” added Tshoswane.
Crypto crime is criminal activity which usually takes place on the dark web.
One of the ways in which cyber criminals operate is to “pull funds from multiple users and redistribute them to different users. … when you mix it’s difficult to trace the origin of the funds,” said Dr June Jeremiah founder of MCS Solutions.
Modise assured the public that Stanbic Botswana have cyber security experts who protect their clients.
“At Stanbic we proactively responding to these key risks by enhancing our cyber security measure developing our block chain analytics and invent in artificial intelligence driven compliance tools. Our goal is to ensure that batswana can explore and adopt virtual assets with confidence in the sense of security,” he said.
Botswana have embraced virtual assets sector and parliament enacted Virtual Asset Act in February 2022.
“Botswana has done well whilst some countries have banned virtual businesses and transactions, Botswana took sensible approach together … instead of driving it underground … it ensured that only compliant and responsible entities are allowed to operate,” said Tshoswane.
He discussed the categories of virtual assets. He explained that Bitcoin and Ethereum are classified as virtual currency tokens. Thether and USD Coins are viewed as Asset tokens. Binance coins and filecoins as Utility tokens. Tokenized real estate (equity shares) as security tokens. Whilst China’s eyuan and Bahama’s Sand dollar are classified as Central Bank digital currencies.
NBFIRA has licensed six entities locally. These consist of four exchanges, one payment system provider and one Stable Coin Issuer.
Titose Musa has urged the Batswana to exercise caution whilst exploiting this new growing industry.
“We must remain vigilant and adaptable to new threats.”
