There was once a nationwide protest in Nigeria against Police brutality. The protest trended at number 1 on Twitter for long as Nigerian youths demanded an end to Police brutality with hashtag, #EndSARS. During this protest, the CBN, in siding with our oppressors, froze the bank account of people donating funds for foods and other logistics to protesters.
They even planned on suspending some financial services providers in the country by claiming they received proceeds of terrorism funds. Nigeria Government referred to citizens fighting for their rights and donating money as terrorist! This i believe the government thinks will deter us but we are still here standing.
It was recently most of the people the Central Bank directed their accounts be frozen, won in court and access to their accounts fully restored.
Now, the next phase is moving to the currency of protest, CRYPTOCURRENCY. Just the same way WikiLeaks popularised Bitcoin donation in defiance of USA government stopping fiat donations to his site. The protesters embraced Cryptocurrency donations to circumvent depositing cash in banks and it worked well.
I believe the current stance of CBN Governor on crypto can be connected to the EndSARs protest. Emefiele, while briefing Nigeria Senate committee on Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions; ICT and Cybercrime; and Capital Market described operations of crypto as opaque, dangerous and contravene the CBN Act of 2007. CBN Governor claimed Cryptocurrencies are issued by unregulated entities and the secrecy behind Crypto makes it suitable for illegal activities and can be used to finance terrorism. He also claimed: “Cryptocurrency is not legitimate money because it is not created or backed by any Central Bank.
I honestly cannot believe an Harvard trained Emefiele can say things like that as his position isn't well researched. How are sites monitoring Crypto movement doing it if Crypto transactions cannot be traced? I believed the CBN position is in furtherance of their plans to keep controlling people and take away our voices
We are the generations with options. When they stopped their traditional media from covering the protest, we used the power of social media to bring worldwide attention to it. Now that they've stopped banks from processing Cryptocurrency payments, we will also start and popularizes the use of Peer to peer Cryptocurrency transactions, thereby bypassing cryptocurrency exchanges in Nigeria.
I foresee wider penetration of crypto in Nigeria even with this ban. Nigeria Naira is in a free fall and Cryptocurrency is becoming a store of values for most Nigerians as we see Crypto trading as life saver amidst high rate of inflation and unemployment. One reason most of us work hard on Crypto blogging sites like read.cash, Torum, Floyx and other Cryptocurrencies blogging sites.
Yeah but no one can fight against crypto currency because that the winning team, , we. Are actually leaving in electronic world