When Government tries to Ban Crypto amid Massive Adoption
The Nigerian socialmedia space has been hit by a statement released by the Central Bank of Nigeri, today, February 5, 2021, signed by the Director of Banking Supervision Bello Hassan and the Director of Payments System Management Department Musa I. Jomoh. The statement prohibits financial institutions in Nigeria from dealing in cryptocurrencies or facilitating payments for cryptocurrency exchange.
Indeed, cryptocurrency has become an increasingly popular investment option in Nigeria in the last few years. It is quite funny that awareness on cryptocurrency was as a result of an earlier ban attempt in 2017. The ignorance of the threatening regulator compounded as more Nigerians ended up securing more crypto investment. Confused, the Securities and Exchange Commission sought to regulate crypto operations sometimes last year buy including crypto as stocks. The efforts has proven futile and again, an abrupt call for a shutdown of bank accounts involved in crypto transactions have been made today.
The attempt to again an crypto related operations in Nigeria has triggered #WeWantOurCryptoBack campaign on Twitter and other socialmedia. I was harped to see how much young Nigerians are already into crypto and perhaps so much in Naira has been deposited. It also reveals that most traditional financial institutions have lost their customers to crypto investments which are more secure and profitable.
Will the Government Succeed?
This is the question that is fielding the Nigeria media space as anxiety has increased over the Billions of Naira that has been invested into crypto. it turns out that this call is an option by the Central Bank of Nigeria to call for regulation and perhaps from crypto earners. lead crypto project leaders like Bitcoin CHief has called for calm among investors of his novel TATCOIN.
With Peer-to-peer transactions which was meant to be the initial ay of trading crypto, it's obvious that the ban statement would only open up new business opportunity for crypto as more commissions could be imposed by exchanges in order to fund P2P transactions fro crypto holders who wish to withdraw their assets. It's quite sad that this is coming at a time when the whole is getting more fascinated about crypto and when it's becoming imminent that everyone should join.
Source: Central Bank of Nigeria’s website
A cursory look at a shpt of the letter above attached can show that there is no outright reason stated for the ban. There is no clause showing the fraudulent looks of crypto. An initial an attempt in 2017 was a warn on Nigerians that investing in crypto could be very risky. It turns out to funny that the government so gets concerned about the safety of her citizen's investment choices. There are games on the pipeline as we can see.
The attempts to ban crypto has been on the high spate in Africa and one wonders why the continent with high poverty index should be all out to control an option that can take many out of poverty.
As at 2018, Algeria, Lybia, Morroco, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe has prohibited crypto transactions in their countries. Others have remained indifferent asides South Africa and Senegal that allow a friendly progressive adoption of crypto among her citizens. Nigeria was supposed to be the break-out point for massive crypto adoption in Africa and government's ban statement will only hasten the process.
The new regulation attempt is one that calls for more options towards the use of crypto in eCommerce and POS options that can deliver fiat to the crypto holder outside of Banks. Let's watchout to see what happens in the next couple of days as another similar campaign to EndSars may erupt.
Quite funny seeing one of the responses on Twitter rather advising the Federal government to invest in crypto and cash-out the profits after 12 months to pay out its foreign debts.
Someone should tell the government that if they use Nigeria’s 2021 budget to buy Crypto and keep it for the next 10 months, we’d be debt free by December.
I think that's a really sincere advice as crypto has come to stay as the future of money.
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Very ironic government is concerned about people losing money to crypto investments! We will see how it pans out though I don't see the ban to be a success
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Certainly it won't last. It only would pave way for innovation and P2P transactions would be the order of the day.
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The numbers that turned out on twitter surprised me as well
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Really surprising to see that many people are already on crypto. I wonder why they've not discovered Hive.
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hahaha or maybe because Hive is still up coming..
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And perhaps you havn't told tour friends about Hive yet. However, we are still expecting more development on Hive to earn the attention of the larger crypto community.
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am doing all i could, but perhaps so many of them wants where to earn fast money
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it's already too late for the bans!
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Very true. It shows how ignorant they are with the working of crypto.
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In 2018, Indian Central Bank too imposed similar restrictions. These led crypto Exchanges to innovate new & better ways to conduct smooth, secure & fast p2p transactions.
It's aptly said that necessity is the mother of all inventions.
Restrictions & scarcity begets creativity and innovations.
It's actually not the first time Nigeria did. There was a first attempt in 2017 and then later on in 2020, they sought to include crypto as stocks.
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exactly. try binance card which allows paying around with crypto and you won't need a bank account anymore.
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I think it's not yet activated in Africa. Hopefully, more solutions would be out.
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Crypto has come to stay. Ill minded Nigerian government be stressing themselves
hahaha, it's really the future of money. ANyone against it is just rejecting the future that technology has brought to us.
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This is just the bitter truth they don't want listen to. And we'll preach this to them in every opportunity given to us
I think they know the truth. They are just afraid of the next phase of millionaires and Billionaires they can't censor.
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haha or instead of them going to meet experts and get their self educated on crypto. it was predicted during the emergence of internet and finally it has come and it won't go anytime soon
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This is indeed a war the government is looking for from the masses. It is more like depriving the people of their daily needs. In this, I don't think there is any way the government will be winning in this. In as much as crypto has been adopted by the masses, and stated in their letter, they have no tangible reason for the ban, it is going to be hard for the government to succeed in that.
It may not be a war perse, just that they know the right thing and wouldn't want to do. Out of their selfishness, they want the masses to remain poor. Things would change over time.
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