Government vs cryptocurrency
This year has seen a series of battles between the Nigerian government and cryptocurrency, especially the popular cryptocurrency exchange; Binance. I have been closely following the events since it started last month and it all started when I saw a news report on nairaland that the government was planning to clamp down on binance and other crypto firms. I dismissed the news because I concluded that the most the government could do was to ban those firms but just like they banned Twitter some years ago, we will still survive with VPNs.
Later that day, I heard rumours that Binance had been blocked and Nigerians could no longer access it. I tried to access the website and truthfully, it wasn't working, until I used a VPN. The same thing happened to all other exchanges I tried (Kucoin, Bybit, Coinbase) and none worked without a VPN. I thought that was the end of it but a few days later, Binance announced that they were working with the government to block the Dollar-Naira exchange. Now things were getting intense.
Then a few days later, Binance removed the naira from their P2P market and that's when it started to affect me. You see, I use Binance majorly for 2 things; to trade Hive (convert to USDT) and use their p2p market to sell my USDT. I sometimes receive USDT from my friend to help sell to naira and then I get a commission but now the p2p market is gone. After checking X (Twitter) and nairaland, I came across 2 alternatives; Bybit and Kucoin. But the problem is that these exchanges don't trade Hive, so the solution was to trade Hive to USDT with Binance, and then transfer the USDT to either Bybit or Kucoin.
By the way, if you want to learn how to transfer your coin (specifically USDT) from Binance to Bybit or Kucoin, I wrote a comprehensive article about it a few days ago - Replacing Binance p2p with Bybit and Kucoin. I also pointed out the features of both Bybit and Kucoin which will probably help you decide on which one to use.
Back to the main topic. So, why is the government doing all this? The reason they gave for targeting Binance is actually amusing; they are blaming it for the current state of the currency. According to them, criminals use Binance to speculate and launder money. They might be right, but let's not forget that the government also implemented crazy policies like floating the naira, injecting excess naira into the economy, making a budget using dollar as the expenses, etc. In my opinion, these things led to the free fall of the naira.
Right now, the Nigerian government is still detaining 2 Binance executives who flew into the country to try and resolve this issue with the government. I heard the government is trying to get them to disclose all the information of their Nigerian users, and this goes against Binance privacy laws. Also, the government slammed a fine of 10 billion dollars on Binance and Binance has come out to say they are not going to pay. Then yesterday, Binance finally announced that they will completely stop naira services on March 8th.
Phew! That's a lot that has happened in less than 2 weeks. The naira right now is currently hovering around 1600 per dollar and I wonder what the Nigerian government would do next. I still don't see the result of this current witch-hunt against Binance but naira would probably be around 2k per dollar right now if the government hadn't stepped into Binance's business. Or maybe the naira is just taking a break and will eventually get to 2k later on, because right now it has started rising again, albeit slowly.
I don't know who is advising these old men in power but whoever it is should probably tell them to back down on their fight against cryptocurrency because when they close one door, we open 10 new ones. At one point they banned cryptocurrency and banks were ordered to freeze the accounts of whoever engaged in cryptocurrency transactions, this gave birth to P2P trading. Now they have successfully blocked Nigerians from Binance P2P trading and that has given rise to other less popular exchanges like OKX, Bybit, and Kucoin to take the stage. Even Telegram now has a p2p market for Nigerians but I won't advise anybody to use this, considering Telegram's reputation with scams
Although these exchanges can't totally replace Binance and honestly I still prefer Binance, but for now we really don't have much of a choice in this. Thanks to the decentralization of the blockchain, the government can't really do much to completely ban cryptocurrency and the least they can do is to poke at exchanges and restrict our access to them (which we can easily bypass with VPN!). No matter what happens, we will always come out on top in this government's war against cryptocurrency.
Thanks for reading
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First and second images: Image by Freepik
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My point is, our government finds all means to ban cryptocurrency and yet there's no job. The fact that they said it's because of us that dollar keeps rising, what is the difference now when they banned binance? God help us in this country.
That's the annoying part. Youths create a source of income for themselves with cryptocurrency but the government is trying to block it without providing alternatives. thanks for stopping by bro
Indeed once the government tries to close one door, we will use other doors. Any ancient government that refuse to accept change will sadly see think the way those in the Nigerian government are thinking
They want to keep doing things the old way because it's easier for them to continue with corruption that way. Thanks for stopping by bro
You are welcome
This country Nigeria is gone(otilo). The corrupt government is saying crypto is responsible for the high cost of living whereas they are the cause.
That's it o, they are always looking for who to blame