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Rabat – Bank Al-Maghrib presented on Tuesday its 22nd annual banking supervision report in Casablanca, confirming that it has continued its work since 2025 on finalizing Morocco’s long-awaited crypto-asset legislation.
The update was brief but it marks the latest step in a regulatory turnaround eight years in the making.
Morocco banned cryptocurrency ownership and trading outright in 2017. The prohibition was enforced by a coalition of authorities including Bank Al-Maghrib, the Moroccan Capital Market Authority, the Foreign Exchange Office, and the Ministry of Economy and Finance who argued that virtual currencies violated exchange regulations.
That position held for the better part of a decade even as usage underground persisted. Despite the ban, illegal crypto use persisted for years, a reality that appears to have pushed regulators to spearhead the shift toward a regulated framework.
Some industry estimates put the number of Moroccan crypto holders as six million people, roughly 16% of the population. This figure comes from private-sector analysis rather than an official government count, therefore, should be treated as indicative rather than confirmed.
The legislative response is Draft Bill No. 42.25 published in November 2025 and prepared jointly by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Bank Al-Maghrib, and the AMMC. As well as aligning with recommendations from the IMF, the Bank for International Settlements, and the Financial Action Task Force, it closely reflects the European Union’s MiCA regulation.
The bill proposes a licensing regime requiring crypto firms to meet capital, risk-control, and governance standards, with prior regulatory approval mandatory before any firm can operate.
The bill defines crypto-assets, including tokenized securities and stablecoins, and assigns supervisory responsibility jointly to the AMMC and Bank Al-Maghrib.
Bank Al-Maghrib’s specific mandate covers stablecoins, or asset-referenced tokens whose value is pegged to an official currency or basket of assets. The central bank will monitor that all such tokens are backed by robust, liquid reserves and that redemption mechanisms remain transparent. Moroccan law notably excludes central bank digital currencies, NFTs, and cryptocurrency mining from its scope.
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Regulators appear to be preparing the technical ground work alongside the legal one. In December 2025, the AMMC held a training seminar with the blockchain analytics firm “Chainalysis” to build its staff’s capacity for on-chain transaction monitoring and forensic analysis.
This is a sign that the concerned actors are planning to enforce the framework once it takes effect, not just draft it.
What remains unclear is timing. The bill is still under review, with coordination continuing between the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Bank Al-Maghrib, and the AMMC to strengthen oversight and position Morocco among countries actively regulating the crypto market. Tuesday’s report offers no firmer date for parliamentary submission.
For a market that operated for years illegally, the shift is important to define: who can issue a token and who supervises a stablecoin.
Morocco spent eight years pretending crypto did not exist, Bill 42.25 is the first real acknowledgment that it does and it will not be going away.
