The Nigerian Central Bank yesterday issued a circular mandating Deposit money banks, non bank financial institution, and other financial institutions from dealing in Cryptocurrencies transactions, and promising severe punishments for any who didn't comply and close any bank account associated with Cryptocurrencies trading.
The move was seen by many Nigerians as the country moving in backward direction. For the sake of clarifications, Nigeria rank third in global Crypto trading behind USA and Russia with a trading volume of $400.1 Million as majority of young, unemployed Nigerians see Cryptocurrency trading as means of escaping unemployment and poverty in the land.
To put this in perspective, the trading volume on Nigerian Stock Exchange is 5.6 Billion Naira while Binance, the biggest centralized Cryptocurrency Exchange in the world that has a Nigeria Naira base pair, Bitcoin/Naira trade is in excess of 13 Billion Naira.
One truth though, Cryptocurrency is highly volatile and so is Cryptocurrency trading. You are always advised to trade crypto with what you can afford to lose. The CBN could have conducted town hall meetings around the country, listen to different opinions but instead of doing this, they came out with a draconian law and place all crypto traders in same basket with criminals. It's obvious they don't understand what Cryptocurrency entails and in their characteristic ways chose to ban it.
One thing the government failed to realise is, Cryptocurrency trading cannot be banned and people will find ways to remit Crypto trading profits to fiat in Nigeria even if it involves round tripping.
On a lighter note, there's a thread on Twitter I cannot help but screenshot. A pastor was tweeted in support of Bitcoin ban simply because it's virtual and cannot be seen. A reply under the tweet got me rolling on the floor with laughter.
This is not the first time that the Nigerian apex bank will placed a ban on cryptocurrencies, they did it before in 2018 yet trading crytocurrencies keeps growing in Nigeria. They can only delay the process, they can not stop the future. Crypto currency is the future of money. I wrote about this a while ago, you can check it out as well.