The freeze, carried out under the National Police Service and overseen by DCI Director Mohammed Amin, targets accounts involved in P2P trading on Binance. P2P trading allows users to buy and sell crypto directly with each other, often through local payment systems like M-Pesa, and is the primary way most retail traders in Kenya access digital assets. Affected users learned of the restrictions with no advance warning or official communication. Complaints quickly spread on social media under the hashtag #BinanceUnmasked after traders realized they had no path to recover access or even understand why their funds were frozen.

One anonymous user captured the situation plainly in a post circulating under the hashtag: "No complainant identified. No formal charges. No timeline given. Funds remain inaccessible. Meanwhile, real life doesn't pause. Bills are piling up. Debt is growing."

Binance has confirmed the restrictions are in place but places responsibility entirely on law enforcement, telling affected users to contact the DCI directly. One user described what they were told: "We were told the freeze was requested by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations under the National Police Service." An unidentified source cited by TechCabal offered a broader rationale on behalf of investigators: "Some of these accounts are being used to move stolen taxpayer funds, and we are seeing an increase as the election period approaches." That account does not come from a named DCI spokesperson and should be read as an unattributed internal characterisation rather than an official statement.

The legal basis for the freezes is contested. Kenya's Proceeds of Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Act generally requires a court order before accounts can be frozen, but the Prevention of Terrorism Act permits immediate freezes without prior notice. There is no confirmed evidence that court orders were obtained as required under the Proceeds of Crime Act. Critics are questioning whether the requirements for court orders under that statute are being bypassed under the broader umbrella of the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

The crackdown reflects Kenya's accelerating push to demonstrate credible enforcement of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing rules. The country was added to the Financial Action Task Force grey list in February 2024, a designation that signals deficiencies in a country's financial crime controls and carries reputational and financial costs. In response, Kenya signed the Virtual Asset Service Providers Act into law on October 15, 2025, with the legislation taking effect on November 4, 2025. The law places crypto exchanges under the Capital Markets Authority, which also supervises brokers, investment advisors, and tokenization platforms, while wallet providers, stablecoin issuers, and payment processors fall under the Central Bank of Kenya. All covered entities face mandatory identity verification, transaction monitoring, and annual cybersecurity audits. Existing businesses have until November 2026 to obtain licenses or face penalties of up to KES 20 million. Draft implementation regulations are still in consultation as of April 2026, meaning enforcement is proceeding faster than the legal framework supporting it.

The DCI has been building enforcement capacity in parallel. It launched a dedicated Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Crime Investigations Unit, partly funded by the European Union. More than 500 crypto fraud incidents have been recorded over three years. In Operation Catalyst, which ran from July to September 2025, authorities across six African countries made 83 arrests and identified 160 persons of interest. Among the schemes investigated was a virtual asset service provider linked to suspected terrorism financing worth KSh 55.5 million, a figure that helps explain why P2P accounts have come into enforcement scope. Binance itself processed over 71,000 law enforcement requests globally in 2025 and assisted in the seizure of $752 million in illicit crypto assets worldwide, figures that illustrate how thoroughly the platform has integrated law enforcement cooperation into its operations.

The scale of what is at stake for ordinary users is significant. Kenya has an estimated four million crypto users and roughly $900 million in monthly trading volume, though that figure is drawn from aggregated web sources rather than a single named primary source and should be treated as a broad approximation pending verification against a citable report. Sub-Saharan Africa recorded more than $205 billion in on-chain transaction value between July 2024 and June 2025, a 52 percent year-over-year increase according to Chainalysis. Disrupting P2P infrastructure in this environment carries real economic consequences, particularly for traders who use these platforms as working capital accounts rather than speculative vehicles.

The pattern is not unique to Kenya. Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has previously frozen hundreds of accounts over P2P foreign exchange flows. Following its 2023-2024 legal dispute with Nigerian authorities, which included the detention of executive Tigran Gambaryan, Binance has shifted markedly toward law enforcement cooperation across the continent. Enforcement actions with limited transparency on centralized exchanges are a documented pattern beyond Africa as well: Pakistan and India both saw opaque account freezes targeting crypto traders in 2023-2024, episodes that produced similar user flight toward decentralized alternatives. Across these jurisdictions, that dynamic pushes retail users toward decentralized exchanges and self-custodied wallets, tools that are harder for any regulator to monitor. For Kenya, which is trying to demonstrate AML credibility to FATF, that migration would be a poor outcome. With more than 50 crypto firms reportedly evaluating Nairobi as a regional hub, how authorities handle due process in the coming months will carry weight well beyond this particular case.