by Rushali 
Recently, Nigeria’s Central Bank has banned all cryptocurrencies, this has led to a massive mistrust about government among the people. Nigeria is ready to make the country a digital economy Nigeria’s National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has released a draft of the National Blockchain Adoption Strategy in October 2020. The strategy is about the adoption of blockchain technology.
On Feb 5 the Central Bank has banned all the cryptocurrencies and directed the financial institution to stop dealing with cryptocurrency that has shocked people.
However, the bank has said that their circular reiteration of the 2017 circular which was declared to warn the banks about the potential risk with the digital currency.
After this announcement, the Security and Exchange Commission has stopped its work on the adoption of cryptocurrency.
In this pandemic, the oil prices crashed and led to the deterioration in the value of Naira and Nigeria has entered a recession phase. Inflation has increased to nearly 16%. With all these factors Nigerians have moved to cryptocurrencies for their income. Nigeria is the largest peer-to-peer bitcoin market in Africa and the second-largest in the world.
Nigerians have adopted cryptocurrency as a mode of payment, exchange, etc due to Central Banks’ high transaction charges. The trading platform Yellow Card has reported a growth of 1840% in users of which 50% is Nigerians.
The Nigerian government has done a lot to make it a digital economy. In 2019, the President of Nigeria has changed the Ministry of Communications to the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy. Last year, the ministry has launched its 8 pillars Digital Economy Policy and Strategy 2020-2030, and subsequently launched a Digital Nigeria skills development platform.
After all this then the Central Banks decision looks like an unplanned one. But the decision will not make much effect as people will move to P2P trading platforms. But the main issue is that trust in the government is affected by this decision. Nigerians have already launched the #wewantcryptoback campaign on Twitter.
