Algeria’s Crypto Ban Survives Its Exit From the FATF Grey List
Algeria’s 2025 prohibition on cryptocurrency remains in force. It covers buying, selling, holding, using, promoting and mining virtual assets, as well as operating exchange platforms, while subsequent banking rules require institutions to detect and block related transactions.
The major development since the ban was enacted is not a reversal: Algeria left the Financial Action Task Force’s grey list in June 2026. That decision recognized progress in the country’s broader anti-money-laundering framework, but it did not repeal the domestic crypto offence or create a licensing route for exchanges, custodians or miners.
What the 2025 law prohibits
The official text of Law No. 25-10, dated July 24, 2025, added Article 6 bis to Algeria’s anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing statute. It prohibits issuing, buying, selling, using, holding, trading or promoting virtual assets, along with creating or operating platforms for their exchange. The prohibition also expressly includes cryptocurrency mining.
The wording reaches further than payments or commercial trading. Holding an asset and promoting it are listed as separate prohibited activities, so the offence does not depend on converting cryptocurrency into Algerian dinars or completing a sale. Businesses that provide exchange infrastructure also fall within the scope of the provision.
The statutory definition nevertheless distinguishes virtual assets from every form of digitally represented value. It excludes digital representations of fiat currencies, securities and other financial assets. An electronic bank balance or a conventional digital payment is therefore not automatically treated as cryptocurrency merely because it exists without physical cash.
Article 31 bis provides for imprisonment from two months to one year and a fine between 200,000 and 1 million Algerian dinars, or either punishment alone. It also leaves room for a more severe sentence where another applicable law covers the conduct. That qualification matters when a crypto-linked transaction is also connected to fraud, money laundering or another offence.
Banks must screen for crypto-linked activity
The ban acquired an operational enforcement layer later in 2025. The Banking Commission’s Guidelines No. 06/2025 of November 12 apply to banks and the financial services of Algeria Post, directing them to prevent, identify, block and prohibit operations linked to virtual assets.
The framework requires stronger customer identification, scrutiny of a customer’s business and source of funds, and monitoring for transfers involving identified virtual-asset platforms. Institutions must refuse relationships or operations suspected of a connection to virtual assets and submit suspicious-transaction declarations to Algeria’s financial intelligence unit.
A single unusual payment is not automatically proof of a crypto transaction. An account of the compliance indicators identifies transfers to known platforms, crypto-related terms in payment information, frequently changing or dark-net-associated IP addresses, unexplained repeated small payments and transfers inconsistent with a customer’s income or profile. Several indicators together can increase suspicion and lead to further review or reporting.
This means that using an overseas exchange or a peer-to-peer counterparty does not create a domestic exemption. Even if a virtual-asset transfer occurs outside an Algerian institution, an associated bank or postal transaction may still be screened, refused or reported. Access to a foreign website or wallet application is not evidence that the underlying activity is lawful in Algeria.
Why the FATF decision did not legalize crypto
Algeria’s international compliance status changed on June 19, 2026, when it was removed from FATF increased monitoring. A U.S. Treasury readout of the June FATF plenary records that Algeria and Namibia were removed while Iraq and Bosnia and Herzegovina were added.
The grey list concerns strategic weaknesses in national systems for countering money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing. Removal indicates that a jurisdiction has addressed the action plan attached to that monitoring process; it does not approve individual financial products or override national legislation.
Law No. 25-10 and the banking guidelines operate at a different legal level from FATF monitoring. The former defines prohibited conduct and penalties inside Algeria, while the latter international process evaluates the effectiveness of the country’s broader controls. A better FATF assessment can therefore coexist with a continuing domestic ban on virtual assets.
What the current position means
Algeria has a prohibition, not a regulated crypto market. The cited framework does not establish licenses for domestic exchanges, custodians or mining operations. Buying through a foreign platform, holding assets in a self-managed wallet or arranging a peer-to-peer transaction does not remove conduct from the wording of Article 6 bis.
The published materials establish the offence, the available penalties and the duties imposed on financial institutions. They do not provide a comprehensive public total of arrests, prosecutions, convictions or blocked transactions specifically attributed to Article 6 bis. It would therefore be unsupported to describe enforcement as either universal or merely symbolic.
For businesses, exposure is not limited to accepting Bitcoin or another token as payment. Promoting a virtual asset, facilitating exchange, operating related infrastructure or routing associated funds through an Algerian bank or postal account can engage different parts of the prohibition and monitoring framework.
The legally significant sequence is clear: Algeria enacted the broader crypto ban in July 2025, followed it with institutional screening rules in November 2025, and left FATF increased monitoring in June 2026 without repealing the prohibition. A future change in crypto’s status would require a new Algerian legal or regulatory measure; an international compliance reassessment does not supply that change by itself.
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