New South African Legislation to Prohibit Pension Funds from Investing in Non-CBDC Cryptocurrencies


Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- South African Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has introduced draft legislation that would restrict how pension fund members' funds can invest under Section 28. Under the old legislation, portfolio managers were allowed to invest up to 2.5% of their member funds in a wide range of "other asset classes", including cryptocurrency assets (other than CBDC). Now, the new rules explicitly exclude cryptocurrencies in the new government gazette. South African regulators are skeptical of the speculative nature of cryptocurrencies due to the lack of investor protection, but are also exploring possible use cases for distributed ledger technology. Section 28 is a piece of legislation that draws influence from the Pension Funds Act, which regulates how funds are invested, in part to protect investors from investing too much in a particular asset class. (BeInCrypto)