Is cryptocurrency legal in Saudi Arabia?

People ask this question in two different ways. "Will I get into trouble?" and "Is anyone watching out for me?" The answers are different. On the first: no Saudi statute prohibits an individual from buying, holding or selling cryptocurrency, and no penalty for doing so exists in law. On the second: nobody is licensed to offer crypto services inside the Kingdom, the Saudi Central Bank (SAMASAMAThe Saudi Central Bank, formerly the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority. It supervises banks, payment companies and money changers.) and the Capital Market Authority (CMACMAThe Capital Market Authority regulates the Saudi stock exchange, securities, investment funds and, through its FinTech Lab, tokenised securities.) have never authorised a crypto exchange, and the banks you use every day do not touch it.

That combination, unregulated rather than banned, is the whole story, and it has not changed in substance since August 2018. Everything below is sourced to the regulators' own pages or to legal summaries that cite them. We never use the word "illegal" as our position, because the regulators do not use it either.

The short answer, in the regulators' own framing

Three official texts define the Saudi position. The first and most important is the 12 August 2018 statement by the Standing Committee for Awareness on Dealing in Unauthorized Securities Activities in the Foreign Exchange Market, published on SAMA's site. The second is a Ministry of Finance warning of August 2019. The third is the absence of anything else: as of today there is no Saudi law, royal decree or regulation that defines virtual assets, licenses virtual-asset service providers, or sets a penalty for trading them.

Two respected outside summaries say the same. The Law Library of Congress wrote in January 2025 that Saudi Arabia "has not enacted specific legislation governing cryptocurrencies", that crypto "is not explicitly prohibited, but it lacks formal legal recognition", and that individual ownership and trading are "not explicitly banned". The Riyadh law firm Zamakhchary & Co, writing on Mondaq in February 2026, put it in compliance language: "no parties are licensed domestically to conduct retail crypto intermediation", and "a comprehensive retail crypto framework has yet to be published". Offshore platforms are technically accessible, but accessibility is not authorisation; cross-border models sit in a grey area.

The 2018 Standing Committee statement

The committee is chaired by the CMA, with SAMA, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Media and the Ministry of Commerce and Investment as members. Its statement is short and the operative line is this:

"virtual currency including, for example but not limited to, the Bitcoins are not approved as official currencies in the kingdom and no parties or individuals are licensed for such practices by regulators in the kingdom."— Standing Committee for Awareness on Dealing in Unauthorized Securities Activities in the Forex Market, published by SAMA, 12 August 2018 (original)

The committee gives its reasons: "high regulatory, security and market risks", "fictitious contracts and the transfer of funds to unknown" parties. It names Bitcoin specifically. What it does not do matters just as much. It states no penalty for individuals, it does not instruct banks to close accounts, and it does not use the word "ban". It is a public warning from a body whose job is awareness, combined with a plain statement of fact: nobody is licensed. Seven years on, that statement of fact is still accurate.

A year later the Ministry of Finance added its own warning, dated 20–21 August 2019 and mirrored on SAMA's site: the ministry "warns against dealing or investing in virtual currencies including cryptocurrencies as they are not recognized by legal entities in the kingdom. They are outside the scope of the regulatory framework and are not traded by financial institutions locally." The same notice warned that anyone marketing a token using the Kingdom's name, the riyal or the national emblem (the "Crypto Riyal" schemes of that year) "will be subject to legal actions". That sentence is the only threat of enforcement in either text, and it is aimed at promoters of fake national coins, not at people who buy Bitcoin.

"Not approved" versus "illegal": why the words matter

Much of the confusion online comes from 2018 press coverage. Arab News, Coindesk and others paraphrased the committee's statement as making Bitcoin "illegal". The English text on SAMA's site says "not approved" and "not regulated". Those are different legal ideas. "Illegal" means a law prohibits the act and attaches a consequence. "Not approved" means the state has not recognised the asset as currency and has not authorised anyone to intermediate it. In the first case you commit an offence by trading; in the second you simply trade without a licensed counterparty and without recourse.

You will still find pages today that answer "is crypto legal in Saudi Arabia" with a flat "no", usually citing the 2018 headlines. You will find others that say "yes, it is legal", which overstates the position in the other direction. The honest wording, and the one the Library of Congress and Saudi law firms use, is that crypto is not prohibited for individuals but unregulated and unprotected. That is the phrasing we use across this site, including on our exchange comparison.

What the law actually looks like today

Beyond the two warnings, the relevant Saudi instruments are all about neighbouring topics. The Anti-Money Laundering Law (Royal Decree M/20 of 25 October 2017) and the Combating Terrorism Financing Law (M/21, 1 November 2017) do not mention cryptocurrency, though they define "funds" broadly and the CFT implementing regulations list "electronic currencies" among the things that count as funds. The Council of Ministers amended the AML Law on 17 April 2026, changing confiscation rules, deportation provisions and creating a Permanent Committee for Combating Money Laundering. Those amendments contain no virtual-asset text. There is therefore no Saudi Travel RuleTravel RuleA FATF requirement that virtual-asset service providers share sender and receiver details on transfers, like banks do for wires. It only applies where a country licenses such providers. regime, because there are no licensed providers for it to bind; the KYCKYCKnow Your Customer: identity verification (ID, selfie, sometimes proof of address) that platforms must perform before letting you trade. you go through is imposed by the offshore exchange under Bahraini, Emirati or its own rules.

On the international side, Saudi Arabia became a full member of the Financial Action Task Force on 21 June 2019, the first Arab country to do so. SAMA hosted the 39th MENAFATF plenary in Riyadh in November 2024, with a session on applying FATF standards to virtual assets. Membership of FATF means the Kingdom is assessed against the virtual-asset recommendations like everyone else, which is one reason most observers expect a licensing framework eventually. It has not produced one yet.

The CMA's work is often misreported as "crypto regulation". The FinTech Experimental Permit Instructions were published on 10 January 2018 and amended on 4 August 2021; they let start-ups test capital-market models in the CMA's FinTech Lab. In June 2020 Wethaq Capital Markets received a permit to arrange sukuk on DLTDLTDistributed ledger technology: the family of shared databases that blockchains belong to. A tokenised sukuk runs on DLT without being a cryptocurrency.. On 4 October 2022 the CMA announced it would accept "security token" business models, explicitly limited to instruments with the characteristics of traditional securities such as shares and fund units, and requiring the applicant to establish an entity in the Kingdom. By then 33 ExPermits had been granted. None of this covers Bitcoin, stablecoins or spot exchanges.

SAMA's own innovation track is similar. Its regulatory sandbox opened in February 2019 for e-wallets, peer-to-peer payments and QR payments; its first graduates were licensed as payment companies in February 2020. No crypto exchange has graduated the sandbox according to any source we could find. The Open Banking Framework (November 2022) and Open Banking Lab (January 2023) sit under the Financial Sector Development Program of Vision 2030 and are about bank data sharing, not digital assets. We cover the broader picture on our Vision 2030 and Web3 page.

Central bank digital currency is where SAMA has done real work. Project Aber, a joint wholesale CBDC experiment with the UAE central bank, published its report in 2020. On 5 June 2024 SAMA announced it had joined the Bank for International Settlements' mBridge project as a participant in the minimum viable product platform. According to reports in September 2026 citing the Financial Times, SAMA said it "successfully completed its mBridge proof of concept on 13 May 2025" and is no longer a participating member. In other words, it was a completed trial, not an active Saudi project. Finally, in November 2025 the Minister of Municipal, Rural Affairs and Housing said the government was working with the CMA and SAMA to launch regulated stablecoinsStablecoinA token designed to hold a fixed value against a currency, such as USDT for the US dollar. A riyal stablecoin would be pegged to SAR. "soon". No date, no rulebook and no riyal-pegged coin has followed as of this writing.

How Saudi banks actually behave

There is no public SAMA circular that names exchanges or orders banks to block crypto payments. What exists is the 2019 Ministry of Finance line that virtual currencies "are not traded by financial institutions locally", and the February 2026 Mondaq note that SAMA-licensed banks and payment service providers "do not support onshore crypto exchange or payment functionality". In other words, banks will not sell you crypto, but they are not told to police what you do with your own money.

In practice, test reports from the region describe a consistent pattern. Payments with a madamadaThe Saudi domestic debit-card network. Most bank debit cards are mada cards, sometimes co-badged with Visa or Mastercard. debit card to a crypto merchant are frequently declined, sometimes by the card processor and sometimes by the issuing bank. Apple Pay backed by the same card often goes through. Credit cards vary by issuer. Ordinary domestic transfers between two individuals, which is what P2P trading relies on, clear without comment, as long as the sender name matches the exchange profile. We found no documented Saudi case of a bank freezing an account specifically for P2P, so treat freeze stories as a generic AML risk that any bank anywhere can trigger when it sees unusual inbound transfers, not as a Saudi rule. Our bank-transfer guide explains how to keep transfers unremarkable.

What is permitted in practice and what carries risk

Think of it as three tiers. The first tier is what residents do routinely and nothing in Saudi law prohibits: holding crypto in a personal wallet, buying and selling on an offshore exchange that accepts Saudi customers, trading P2P with riyals through a bank transfer or a wallet app, and paying with a card where a processor accepts it. The risks here are counterparty and fraud risks, not legal ones. Our scams guide covers the patterns that actually cost people money.

The second tier is permitted but exposed. Large transfers to or from exchanges, cash meet-ups to sell USDT, and running a side business that buys and sells for other people all attract compliance attention. Cash desks are the clearest case: licensed money changers are SAMA-supervised and SAMA has suspended exchange houses for other violations, so any cash crypto counter is operating outside its licence. Prefer a regulated OTC desk for large tickets.

The third tier is simply not possible as a lawful Saudi business: operating a crypto exchange, brokerage, custodian or OTC desk from inside the Kingdom under a Saudi licence. The 2018 statement says no party is licensed, and no licence category has since been created. Companies that want to serve the market incorporate in Bahrain under the Central Bank of Bahrain, in Abu Dhabi's ADGM or in Dubai under VARA, and onboard Saudi customers across the border. Rain and CoinMENA are the familiar examples. Mining is its own grey area, with no law either way; see our mining page.

Is Binance legal in Saudi Arabia?

This is the most searched version of the question, so it deserves a direct answer. Binance is not licensed in Saudi Arabia, because there is no Saudi licence for it to hold. "Gulf Binance" that you may see mentioned is a Thai joint venture and has nothing to do with the Kingdom. At the same time, the Binance app is on the Saudi App Store, the platform runs a riyal P2P market, and it added urpay (Al Rajhi's wallet) and Liv. KSA as official SAR payment methods on 29 April 2022, with a flat 0.05 USDT taker fee per P2P order on USDT pairs since March 2024. Residents use it daily without any legal consequence.

What you do not get is protection. If Binance restricts your account, you deal with its support under its own terms, not with a Saudi ombudsman. That is true of every platform on our list, including CEX.IO, which serves Saudi residents through CEX OVRS LLC in Nevis while its US and UK sister companies hold FinCEN and FCA registrations that do not extend to you. Read our Binance review for the SAR rails and limits, and remember the rule that applies to all of them: keep on the exchange only what you are actively trading.

Timeline of the Saudi position

• October 2017

  Anti-Money Laundering Law (Royal Decree M/20) and CFT Law (M/21) issued. Neither mentions cryptocurrency.

• January 2018

  CMA publishes its FinTech Experimental Permit Instructions, opening the FinTech Lab.

• 12 August 2018

  Standing Committee (CMA-chaired, SAMA member) warns that virtual currencies are not approved and nobody is licensed.

• February 2019

  SAMA launches its regulatory sandbox for payments fintech.

• 21 June 2019

  Saudi Arabia becomes a full FATF member.

• 20–21 August 2019

  Ministry of Finance warns against dealing in virtual currencies and against tokens that misuse the Kingdom's name or the riyal.

• 2020

  Project Aber (SAMA–UAE wholesale CBDC pilot) report published; CMA grants Wethaq a DLT sukuk permit.

• 4 August 2021

  CMA amends the Experimental Permit Instructions.

• 4 October 2022

  CMA begins accepting security-token models in its FinTech Lab, limited to tokenised traditional securities.

• November 2022 – January 2023

  SAMA issues the Open Banking Framework and opens the Open Banking Lab.

• 5 June 2024

  SAMA joins the BIS mBridge MVP platform for wholesale CBDC settlement.

• November 2024

  SAMA hosts the MENAFATF plenary in Riyadh, with a session on virtual assets.

• 13 May 2025

  SAMA completes its mBridge proof of concept; later reported to have left the project.

• November 2025

  A minister says the government is working with the CMA and SAMA on regulated stablecoins. No rulebook follows.

• 17 April 2026

  Council of Ministers amends the AML Law. No virtual-asset provisions.

What would change if a framework arrives

If SAMA or the CMA publish a virtual-asset framework, expect four things in roughly this order. A licence category for exchanges and custodians, which would let a platform establish a Saudi entity and open a riyal rail through local banks. A stablecoin rulebook, since that is the product the government has named. AML obligations for those licensed firms, including a Travel Rule, which would make the AML Law's current silence irrelevant. And probably a restriction on marketing by unlicensed offshore platforms, which is how the UAE and Bahrain protect their licensed firms.

For an individual, a framework would mean you could finally hold a Saudi regulator responsible for the platform you use, and that your bank could offer a crypto account instead of declining your card. It would not retroactively make today's trades unlawful, and nothing in the announcements so far suggests individuals would be penalised for past activity. Until then, the practical advice stands: use platforms that publish their legal entity and fee schedule, keep records for Zakat and any home-country tax, and never treat a "licensed in Saudi Arabia" claim as true, because today it cannot be. If a platform tells you otherwise, that itself is a warning sign.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and references

1. SAMA — Standing Committee warning: virtual currencies are not regulated inside the Kingdom (12 Aug 2018)
2. SAMA mirror — Ministry of Finance warning on virtual currencies (21 Aug 2019)
3. CMA — FinTech Experimental Permit Instructions (2018, amended 4 Aug 2021)
4. CMA — Security Token business models accepted in the FinTech Lab (4 Oct 2022, Arabic)
5. SAMA — regulatory sandbox launch (11 Feb 2019)
6. SAMA — joins the BIS mBridge MVP platform (5 Jun 2024)
7. SAMA — Saudi Arabia becomes a full FATF member (21 Jun 2019)
8. SAMA — 39th MENAFATF plenary in Riyadh, session on virtual assets (Nov 2024)
9. Library of Congress — Regulation of cryptocurrencies in the GCC, part one (14 Jan 2025)
10. Zamakhchary & Co via Mondaq — Crypto platforms and fiat rails in Saudi Arabia (26 Feb 2026)
11. CMS — The recent changes to the AML Law (April 2026 amendments)

Related pages

• Best exchanges8 platforms that serve Saudi residents, compared
• P2P tradingHow SAR P2P works and how to avoid scams
• Binance in KSASAR P2P market, urpay, fees
• Tax and ZakatNo income tax — but what about Zakat?
• ScamsCommon fraud patterns and how to stay safe