If you own cryptocurrency the Reserve Bank wants to know. The draft Capital Flow Management Regulations, issued by the National Treasury, would require a holder to declare crypto within 30 days and say where it is kept. Regulation 10, as published, sets no minimum threshold for disclosure.

Under the draft Crypto Asset Manual, issued jointly by the Reserve Bank and National Treasury, trading platforms would have to record each client’s home address and ID number and make the records available to the central bank within 48 hours as a spreadsheet.

Criminals would pay well for such a list. In January 2025 kidnappers seized David Balland, a cofounder of the French wallet maker Ledger, and cut off one of his fingers in the process of…