It's no longer news that the Nigerian Government has ban any crypto related transactions in all financial institutions. It came as a shock to many considering Nigeria rank in daily BTC transactions.
The ban means Crypto exchanges like Binance have now suspended deposit and withdrawal of naira till further notice.
What I observed is the government don't like what they can't control and that's why many countries are yet to accept fully accept crypto.
The governments spin all sort of lies to justify their bans or restrictions. You hear
- People use it for money laundering
- Scams are perpetrated with cryptos
- Terrorists organisations use it to move funds and so on
The truth is they are just scared of the death of fiat.
One of the greatest scams of all time was carried out by Bernie Madoff using the US dollar. The Ponzi scam perpetrated by Madoff was over $64bn. This doesn't mean they should term the US dollar as illegal. Infact, they derive joy in using it as their reserve.
The issue of terrorists using it to move fund is absurd when you consider the fact that these terrorists are sponsored by these same governments. They pay terrorists to lay down their weapons which is crazy. The terrorists simply get the money and run back into the woods to scale up their operations.
Way forward
There is a saying in Nigeria that put your house in order so outsiders won't have an excuse.
I think if the crypto community can unite to form a sort of regulatory body created and maintained by everyone.
We've had cases of people being kidnapped and ransom being asked for in Crypto. What about if all exchanges cooperate to freeze such funds once it enters their wallet.
A sort of service can be created where users can use to blacklist a fraudulent crypto address. It can even require a sort of payment to access in order to prevent spams. I don't think that breaks the decentralisation of cryptocurrencies. Instead, it is giving us more control and building more trust.
Cases of exchanges hack will be a thing of the past because where are you going to sell it. Any Crypto address receiving the coins should be flagged. This will make it harder to sell via P2P because no-one wants to pay for a coin he can't sell.
Then the issue of scam exits too should be watched. Centralised exchange can do better than listing coins of no origin or shady founders. Decentralised exchanges should endeavour to include a strong warning which must be accepted before using them. Users should know that having a coin on uniswap doesn't equate originality. There can be rug pull by the founders anytime.
The issue of money laundering is not a problem considering the fact that most exchange have a form of KYC that put things in check. For exchanges like Binance where you can trade crypto without KYC, they have limits on what you can withdraw.
I believe if all this is put in place, the governments won't have any more excuse again and it will even bring trust to the crypto world.
I have been ruminating over this for a while and I need your opinion. Do you think crypto will gain more adoption by putting more regulations in place?