A growing number of businessmen in Nigeria choose to manage their business using the digital currency instead of the Naira. The country's national currency seems to be more volatile than Bitcoin, at times.
While cryptocurrencies are struggling for relevance around the world, Nigerian citizens are beginning to use Bitcoin as an alternative to their own currency, the Nigerian Naira.
With this in mind, it is not surprising that Nigerian entrepreneurs prefer to deal with Bitcoin instead of their own currency. An example is Silas Okwoche, co-founder of Nerve Mobile. The self-taught engineer bought Android smartphones from China through Alibaba. However, when the Nigerian Naira fell more than 15% against the Chinese Yuan, his company came to an end. Overnight, your product became too expensive to buy and resell.
Another Nigerian businessman, known by the name of Temo, also acquires his hardware from China. However, unlike Silas, this tech-savvy businessman uses Bitcoin to manage his affairs. Whenever new Chinese hardware is needed, Temo exchanges Naira for Bitcoin through LocalBitcoins.com, or a similar peer-to-peer market, and changes the digital currency to the Chinese yuan. He says that exchange rates are much lower than traditional methods, and transactions are completed at a much faster rate. When using banks, Temo must pay fees to Nigerian and Chinese banks, and it is very likely that he will have to wait a week for his money to be available.
Another success story in Nigeria is Soji, who works as a web designer in Lagos. "I can use Bitcoin for anything now. It means that I can invest and pay someone now, except for seniors, I will send them Bitcoin. But some people think it's a scam to deal with Bitcoin and they also fear being pirated, since many people do not know how to protect themselves online, "said Soji. Thanks to cryptocurrencies, Soji is now able to buy goods and services online, such as web hosting, where previously his currency was not accepted.
Toyosi, a crypto-monetary and independent investor from Lagos, believes that most of the Ponzi schemes are gone and Bitcoin is starting to stabilize. He is the founder of SureRemit, a company that uses a cryptographic file as an alternative to send money abroad.
While the adoption of cryptocurrencies in Nigeria may not be news, it is still interesting to see how people present creative ways to use them to make their lives easier. The Central Bank of Nigeria could have called Bitcoin a bet, once, and even warned against investing in it, but that did not seem to discourage young entrepreneurs from pursuing their dreams.