In this urgent 15-minute conversation, Stephan speaks with Ricki Allardice, one of the leaders of the Property Rights Defense Group, about South Africa’s Draft Capital Flow Management Regulations 2026 — the most serious threat to Bitcoin self-custody the country has seen.

Ricki breaks down exactly what the draft rules would do to private keys, self-custody, and everyday Bitcoiners, where the process stands right now, and what the community can still do before the 30 June 2026 public comment deadline.

Timestamps:

(00:00) – Overview of the Regulation Against Self Custody

(04:07) – Public Consultation Process 

(05:49) – Can it be challenged?

(07:20) – It’s About Capital Controls

(08:02) – AML, Sanctions, FATF 

(10:46) – What does it mean for Bitcoiners in South Africa?

(12:22) – Safety or Security concern here?

(14:22) – Call to Action and Support for Legal Defense

Links: 

• Site: propertyrightsdefense.org
• X: https://x.com/PRDG_ZA 
• Donate: https://btcpay386617.lndyn.com/apps/4TcSxV6dNFYzb1DBDthPL89Tjz72/crowdfund?ref=propertyrightsdefense.org 

Stephan Livera links:

• Follow me on X: @stephanlivera
• Subscribe to the podcast
• Subscribe to Substack

Transcript:

Stephan Livera (00:00.657)
Hi everyone, welcome back to Stephan Livera podcast. Today we’re doing the Fast Edition. Joining me today is Ricki Allardice from Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town. And Ricky’s gonna be joining me to chat a bit about this new regulation that’s been proposed in South Africa. So Ricky, let’s get straight to it. What’s the real threat here with these new capital flow management regulations?

Ricki Allardice (00:21.698)
Hey Stephan, good to see you, man. yeah, so it’s a regulation that’s been proposed by the Treasury slash the Reserve Bank of South Africa. and essentially what they what they’ve done is really abnormal. they’ve tried to push this thing through extremely quickly. And I think the the the high level cliff notes for people to understand is that they are proposing new regulations on an existing act. So what they’re doing is they’re circumventing parliament completely with this new regulation. And when you understand what they’re trying to push

It’s cr absolutely crazy that they’re trying to do this without parliamentary oversight. So essentially the law they are using is a law from nineteen thirty three, which was written before South Africa was a independent republic. We were still a British colony at that time. and so the law is written in nineteen thirty three and then it was amended in nineteen sixty one by the apartheid government. And now the new ANC government, which is I say new, it’s been in power for over thirty years, you know, post New South Africa.

They are using a colonial law slash an apartheid era law to push through these regulations. So I mean the irony shouldn’t be lost in anyone that this is what the ANC is doing. But the the regulations they’re pushing is now amending effectively the old capital controls laws that South Africa has, which in itself is is a major issue. but they are pushing through these regulations which seek to criminalize self-custody of Bitcoin and crypto assets. So what they’re saying is that

You have to leave your crypto assets. and this is the language they use, not my language, but they you have to leave your crypto assets with a authorized crypto asset service provider, so regulated entity, so in other words, an exchange. and if you do not do that, then and you transact and they they catch you, they can confiscate all of your crypto, you have to hand over your private keys. and this can be enforced by a whole host of different actors, not just the police.

And all of this can be done without a warrant. So it’s the police, it’s the border control agents, it’s a agent of the Reserve Bank, so Reserve Bank employees and agents of Treasury, Treasury employees. Super wide. and the biggest thing is there’s this undisclosed threshold that they have not disclosed in the the draft regulations they published. They just say some threshold, which is to be defined in the future, you are not allowed to transact over that amount. They

Ricki Allardice (02:44.587)
Have since walked it back slightly because of the massive public pressure they’ve faced. but nothing real has been published in in Gazette form yet. so we still are kind of we don’t really know what they what they’re proposing here. But the biggest thing we do know is that they’ve left a bunch of placeholders for themselves, like the undisclosed threshold amounts. In other words, they could set the threshold amount to some arbitrary number like 10,000 Rand, which is like five hundred dollars, you know. so you’re allowed to do PDP.

things under five hundred dollars but they are above that you gotta use a a regulated custodian which means you have to leave your crypto your bitcoin with the custodian. so we just don’t know but I mean it’s it’s it’s it’s crazy that they can try to publish a regulation without a quantum defined in it. So anyway, what happened was they published this regulation, they gave the public less than a month to comment on this and this is the most important change to a regulation in decades, right? They gave the public less than a month. There was big public pushback

They then reduced the time to twenty two working days and then on the day before that that comment window was due to expire, they then increased it to the thirtieth of June. So we’ve got another six days.

Stephan Livera (03:54.383)
Okay. So as we speak now it’s the twenty fourth of June, so you’ve got what, six days or whatever to get a comment. And so this is still in public consultation, right? Can you give us the what’s the normal process here? Is it public consultation and then the law changes or what?

Ricki Allardice (03:57.998)
Six days.

Ricki Allardice (04:02.583)
Correct.

Ricki Allardice (04:06.893)
Well this is the crazy thing, right? So so because it’s a regulation change, there’s a public consultation window where the public can have their say, but it is not a parliamentary oversight window. Once they that window closes, they can gazette the changes. So in other words, promulgate the changes within twenty four hours. The minister can can just gazette it, right? so they’ve basically like been confusing the public quite a lot with submitting multiple different email addresses that you need to submit your submission to. And then to make it even better

The Treasury is supposed to respond to every submission via email saying we’ve acknowledged your receipt. They sent out a response and C not even CC, they sent it to everyone who is my internet just dropped? Can you hear me? Yeah. They sent this email out to everyone, you know, who had submitted a comment. So they doxxed everyone’s email address who had submitted a comment on this draft regulation. Didn’t use PCC, they didn’t even copy, just said two.

Stephan Livera (04:49.67)
Yeah, gone.

Stephan Livera (04:59.687)
I see. They didn’t use B C C they just kinda copied everyone on the email.

Ricki Allardice (05:04.685)
you know, everyone and they did this in batches. So we know of at least three batches of around three hundred people who are doxed this way. So in other words, everyone who has now submitted comment that they’re in opposition to this has now been doxxed by the government as well. So it’s crazy. But these are the people who trying to force you to hand over their pri your private keys to them. They can’t protect your email address. You know how they’re going to protect your private keys.

Stephan Livera (05:05.957)
Yeah.

Stephan Livera (05:18.244)
Ridiculous. Yeah. so

Stephan Livera (05:25.69)
Yeah. And I’m sure people are aware there was like that famous one in France, I believe, like a French equivalent of IRS. Someone was like I think bribed to give up some information on, you know, Bitcoin and crypto holders. Now, what is a what are the possibilities for challenge here? So obviously this public consultation, is there any kind of legal challenge or is there like a political aspect of it also that you could go to the lawmakers to try to influence things that side? What what’s possible here?

Ricki Allardice (05:30.743)
Yeah. Exactly.

Ricki Allardice (05:51.266)
Yeah, exactly. Right. So so the biggest thing here is that we have to we have to wait and see what happens. So right now we’ve put together a action group, a volunteer association called the Property Rights Defence Group. property rights defence dot org if you want to check out our site. So we’ve put this group together to see first submit public comment. So we’ve been putting together comment that’s going out today. We’ll submit up our our own comments. And we’ve purposely waited late in the game to submit our comment because the government’s been moving the goalposts the whole time.

So we want to, you know, we expect them, fully expect them in the next few days to shift the goalposts again. So a lot of the companies and interested parties that submitted comments early on, those are no longer relevant because they’ve shifted the goalposts on people, changed changed the wording, etc. so anyway, we we’re submitting public comment, but then the real fight begins after the window closes. And so legal challenge is the route to go. We are coordinating with a few other groups, civic action groups in South Africa.

to you know how we mount a legal challenge against this. it’s quite complex because it depends which which angle of attack you want to take. There’s many we can take. Procedural bring one of them, the first one. You know, they just bungled the procedure terribly. but then you’ve got to obviously attack the case on its merits. And fundamentally what this comes down to is capital controls. I mean you yourself are Australian Australia dropped their capital controls in the early eighties or late seventies, I believe. Australia had

you know, a massive economic boom for decades thereafter. Right. And so this is what South Africa really needs. Like, why do we have capital controls in place? We’re ostensibly a free society. We got rid of a part eight. We got rid of a colonialism. Why do we still have capital controls in place? And so ultimately the reason why the government can try to use these regulations and enforce these regulations is because capital controls are on the book. So that’s effectively where the logical terminal point of this is, is like challenging capital controls in South Africa.

if we’re a free society, you should be able to move your capital freely at the end of the day, right?

Stephan Livera (07:52.86)
What’s the reason I guess underlying their thinking? Is it also like, as you said, the capital controls part of it, but it is it also like this whole AML, FATF sanctions side of things also? Is that also coming into the conversation or into their r rationale here?

Ricki Allardice (08:02.335)
Absolutely.

Ricki Allardice (08:08.617)
Absolutely. So it’s both of those things. So South Africa got grey listed by FADIF a few years ago. Now for those of you who don’t know Fatif is it’s an unelected group of bureaucrats who live somewhere hang out somewhere in Europe. And they are largely being pushed by the US as well. But they publish these what they you know, what they suggest, suggestions for how count countries should handle their internal financial affairs, comply with AML regulations, etc. And they’re suggestions, but if you don’t comply you get grey listed.

And then your credit rating gets downgraded, everything. So South Africa got grey listed. then the South African Treasury took a bunch of steps to get off the grey list so that we could get access to international capital. We have subsequently been removed from grey listing. So that’s a big one, right? Is the government complying with these unelected bureaucrats to enforce these draconian, you know, KYC anti AML laws. So that’s one aspect. The second aspect is if a country has capital controls.

The government is not accountable to the local people because you can’t vote with your money. You can’t move your money out of the country if it’s if there’s bad governance. So capital controls protect bad governance. And South Africa is the king of bad governance. I mean, we unfortunately there’s a l a lot of good things about South Africa, but one of the major bad things is that we are the canary in the coal mine for the rest of world. The bad ideas that we’re seeing in Europe and and the West have been in place in South Africa for the for the past twenty years.

You name it, you know. yeah, you name it. Pick pick the law, we’ve we’ve got it, right? so I really think South Africa is being used as a test case for the rest of the world. Because you have this situation in South Africa where you have a government that has majority rule, they don’t but they don’t re represent you know the business class and the capital class in South Africa. They don’t represent the bourgeoisie, put it that way. And they they can basically do what they want.

and and this is kind of I think the model for what’s happening in the rest of the rest of the world. So I I this is why I implore Bitcoiners and crypto owners around the world to pay attention to what’s happening in South Africa and how we are fighting this, because you might find yourself in this position very, very soon and have to fight it yourself. The key difference in South Africa though is that we are far more the country’s far more lawless. So people don’t listen to the government here. Whereas in the rest of the world, in the developed world, people do. So yeah, we have a fighting chance, I think, because of that.

Stephan Livera (10:35.854)
Let’s see. So one other thing. If this doesn’t get fixed or watered down, what does this mean for the Bitcoin industry and everyday Bitcoin is in South Africa?

Ricki Allardice (10:44.791)
Well, if if adopted wholesale as they propose, and they have walked this back slightly in a in a press statement, but if adopted wholesale is initially proposed, it would it would make self custody illegal. And so obviously I’ve seen on Twitter people are saying, you know, you can’t you can’t ban Bitcoin, you can only ban yourself from it. I’m like, Yes, I totally agree. But the people that get caught up in the middle of this are the ones who are gonna suffer. Because South Africa has had a massive run of crypto and Bitcoin adoption over the past

10 years. We have some of the highest rates of of Bitcoin adoption in the world. you might be aware of this, but like all of the projects like Money Badger, etc., which facilitate the payment of just normal goods and services in South Africa with Bitcoin, you can pay at over five hundred thousand stores with Bitcoin. So for a brief moment in time, we were like Bitcoin Mecca. You could live on Bitcoin very easily. And so that could all go away. And all these businesses that have been started up in the space would go away. All of the

circular economies would go away, it would criminalize the individuals in the circular economies who’ve been earning their salaries in Bitcoin and and living on a Bitcoin standard, it would criminalize them for self custody. So the human rights effects here would be quite quite large. And the big thing is it would just completely destroy the industry that’s been built here as well. so yeah, we instead of saying, Hey look, South Africa’s this shining example of what can be done on Bitcoin, they they taking that and turning it around on its head and being like let’s let’s clamp down on it.

As as mess.

Stephan Livera (12:11.995)
Yeah, one more on the human side. Is there a safety or security concern if people end up having to either move their coins into exchanges or declare everything?

Ricki Allardice (12:21.773)
Absolutely. I mean, the criminality you see in France now, with organized crime going after Bitcoin crypto holders, after that leak from a tax official, it would be multiplied by ten or a hundred in South Africa. Because the criminality in South Africa is way more than it is in France, and that’s saying something. So you can absolutely expect those details to be leaked to organized crime and you can expect, you know, the same things you’ve seen with farm murders you could see happening with, you know, Bitcoin and crypto, right? Where people are being kidnapped and

Horrible things being done to them. That’s the one aspect of it. The second aspect is just the act empowers officers of the Treasury or the Reserve Bank or any officer of law to seize that crypto. If they seize that by getting your private keys, that Bitcoin is not going to make its way back to the Treasury. I can guarantee you, a large percentage of it is just going to be stolen by the agents doing the the confiscation. And ironically, they’ll keep it in self-custody themselves because that’s this most secure.

way to keep your crypto. So it won’t make it to the government or to a regulated custodian. So the the the human effects here are massive. The risks are massive. I’ve spoken to quite a few large Bitcoin holders and and their position is this happens, this goes through, we’re out. We’re leaving. You know, they’re going somewhere that’s more more crypto friendly. or just more property friendly. But our position on this is like you you gotta dig your trenches somewhere. You can’t flee.

You know, if you flee, you’re gonna go to a place where you have less of a community and you have less, you know, less of a voice and you can actually effect less change. so our approach is to band together with the the parallel institution guys in South Africa, of which there many who are doing great work, and dig our trenches, and you know, this is where we make our stand. so yeah, that’s really our our approach, and we wanna we wanna set a blueprint and an example for how the rest of the world can fight this stuff when it comes to them.

Stephan Livera (14:12.891)
All right, well listeners, check it out. The website is propertyrightsdefense.org. and yeah, make sure if you’re you know a listener in South Africa or you share this out there, make sure people know about this. because you know, these threats are coming, so people should all be aware. any you know, last message that you have for people.

Ricki Allardice (14:17.141)
Yeah.

Ricki Allardice (14:31.019)
Yeah, so we’re raising funds for the legal the legal fund and for paying for operations. So if you’ve got want to make any crypto bitcoin donations, please do so on the website. There’s a donate button. We don’t have any Fiat donations, specifically because we’ve just seen a range of civic institutions in South Africa have their bank accounts seized for international donations, for breach of capital controls. The Reserve Bank has just gone in, frozen their bank accounts, taking the money out of their accounts unilaterally. So

And their crypto held on exchanges because they were getting crypto donations on ex from an exchange like retards, what are they doing? But anyway, they were doing that. The government went in and froze those accounts obviously. So not your keys, not your coins. So we have specifically set up our donations only in crypto. It all comes back to Bitcoin. We’ve got some swap services if you want to give us shit coins, but you know, it all gets swapped to Bitcoin. It’s all held in multi sig, geographically distributed key holders outside of the country. So, you know, the the state can shake their fists at the blockchain.

But yeah, if you if you wanna support our cause, we’ll accept SATS. that’ll be fantastic. And that all goes to our legal fund and to pay for operations, et cetera. So yeah, property rights defence dot org.

Stephan Livera (15:37.081)
Excellent. All right, well yeah, listeners reminded to share it and my guest today is Ricky Allardyce from Property Rights Defence. Thank you.

Ricki Allardice (15:42.936)
Thanks, Stephan.