Topic: Confirmed NGN banks blocking account, what could be the outcome on the economy? (Read 338 times)

Poor government with poor management that’s what you can say here mate. Nigerian government already stated in the press conference that their reserve bank has seen tremendous devaluation in the Nigerian Currency due to increased use of cryptocurrency.

Considering the country is already underdeveloped and don’t seem to progress much with proper city planning, roadways, housing and more it is BUT OBVIOUS that government would not want the money to flee away across the border in the form of crypto.

You can't be sure about this because even accounts used p2p were banned with the suspicion and there is no solid evidence from the both side to prove anything but still banks have the upper hand because it is centralized and you trusted them and agreed their terms of usage.

If you are in Nigeria and you want to trade crypto without being traced it is better to use P2P binance exchange it's more secure and safe and in fact there are many buyers and sellers on binance P2P platform, say no to government and crypto haters, you can't be stopped

Hmmm I think they are only going to block accounts that are found with crypto activities after the ban has been declared. But if the activities on your account are past activities, I don’t think they are going to do anything to you. So, just chill. And moreover since centralized exchanges are no longer going to work there, you no longer have a problem with them.

This time around if you want to trade you’re going to have to make use of decentralized exchanges in Nigeria, it’s possible that there are many of them that will be available there, like Paxful, Binance DEX and the rest of them. And this time around anyone trading cryptocurrency in Nigeria has to be careful and also keep it secret.

I know of other countries virtual and online banking system but there are security requirements to prevent another citizen from opening a bank account in another country like in the US you must have your SSN number  to open an account while in Nigeria you must have a BVN number to open both virtual and offline bank. A citizen from Nigeria cannot open a bank in the US (Online or Offline) without the SSN number. Are you Estonian? I may like to know how this work.@elkaka22

Especially considering you are a huge known person in the crypto world, I didn't even know you had anything to do with these bans affecting you. I know that you must be making a decent money compared to other people in your nation, even if you are not "wealthy" you are probably doing alright for yourself, and that should make it even harder for you to handle all these transactions while there is a ban, because you would be under a lot of suspicion when you get that much money.

However peer2peer may not really be that easy considering all the people who will want to get a good cut. What I can suggest you is try to find nations you can open an account with, like Estonia had online applications for example, with that you could technically move your exchange accounts to your other nations bank account and they will allow you to get crypto and fiat and you could just move that banks money and wire that to your own banks account.

Already I don't hold Naira, so won't be affected that much if my account is been frozen. When ever I need fiats that's when I withdraw my profits to Naira therefore there's never a high amount of funds in my account except those needed for urgent needs. Before now I used the centralized mode of transacting which involve me withdrawing directly with the Binance third party service but after the ban I switched to the peer2peer system.

As I said before the poor banking services was one of the reasons I avoided this features but that's the only choice right now to trades my crypto to fiats and staying under the radar. For the moment I think I'm safe because I had to visit my banks few days bank to clearify some transaction that got reverse but not crypto related.

I didn't get questioned irrespective of my account been very active still trading bitcoin. The transactions still have been coming in although there's no tag to link them to crypto trading.

There is also P2P that will never be ceased to exist, it will always be there. Obviously speaking it is not going to be easy, but if there are people with accounts in foreign nations that allow bitcoin trading, they will always try to get bitcoin from you and give you cash or get cash from you and give you crypto and they will use that money to trade on exchange at other banks nation and they will profit from these transactions.

Is this worse for people who can't find anything else then p2p? Of course it is, they have to use those people and there is no other way now, but at least we can say that it is not impossible to trade there, it is totally doable. This is why I believe it is quite important that we manage to help those people by allowing them to trade with crypto or work with crypto and have some sort of freedom on other exchanges without banning them to participate in big exchanges.

It will affect their economy not the people who involved in the cryptocurrency market for sure because people will find new way to convert their Bitcoin to fiat which may not necessarily the need of bank accounts then its revenue loss for government so they are encouraging the black market activity more with auch stupid idea. But I guess this ban is not going to last long because the similar ban by Indian Central bank got cancelled by their supreme court last year.

This is the dumbest thing any Government would bring up, if this should be the criteria then everybody accounts would be closed down because people make huge transactions on a daily without dealing in crypto.

All these transactions are p2p based and no bank will invite you as long as the amount is in line with CBN maximum daily deposit for individual and corporate accounts and money laundering act. You only get question to answer when you cross those rules. Till then you're pure Anonymous

Question to CryptopreneurBrainboss:

Knowing that you are under a magnifying glass, what are you planning to do or have already done? Have you withdrawn already all the funds from your bank account to prevent them being frozen? Have you found already a bank to substitute your current one ? In other words - do you have a Plan B if this situation affects you?

P.S. If the banks know you are involved with cryptocurrency and gaining income from your business, is it available just to pay income tax from your deeds and they will leave you alone? 

You clearly did not read what @stompix explained to you. In a year they can go through their database and identify transactions from random accounts if they want and if it is huge amounts you will be asked to provide the source of income for those transactions. So it is not a clear cut easy solution as you think.

There will be always a loophole if you are having business oversees and it is not a big deal but the problem will be for normal traders.

What connection does this have to do with the other Meta discussion, Yes there are over 1m Nigerians on BTT both active and inactive accounts I need someone to come up with a better statistics both active and inactive users like I said before I'll eat crow if I'm wrong(in satoshi's voice)

You are not getting the point most of these people didn't open an account just to buy crypto. In Nigeria the first aim of every bank account holder is to save their money, for instance I opened my bank account 2013, I started using my bank to buy crypto 2016. That being said and agreed upon, the statistics might be too big or small but the fact remains that Nigerians are growing much in crypto space and most of the local banks were already unbanked, this was one of the few reasons the CBN frown at it and placed some restrictions. Nigerians are also in Ponzi scheme, and other stuffs.

Then you don't really know Nigerians that much, this CBN bank-crypto restrictions didn't start this year it had been there for the past 5 years but the penalty was different( the penalty was that should in case of any unsuccessful transactions the bank will not be held responsible and will not partake in any investigation, you buy at your own risk)


Nigerians are the smartest people on earth when they want to do something they can never be caught, everybody shifted to p2p, I've been doing transactions for the past weeks no problem and my bank account is still active.

When incidence like this occurs, the economy suffers greatly directly or indirectly; if you watched the news last night; Nigeria inflation hits an all time high of 20.57% which does not even speak the reality as there are inflation in fuel prices as of today. Also international bodies are seeing how banks close up accounts without following legal proceedings, investors are leaving the Nigeria market; and fdi is nothing to write home about.

The outcome honestly; is unfair on citizens.

Another ridiculous claim like the one about 1 million Nigerians having an account on bitcointalk?
You need a reality check and I'm happy to give you one.


So what?
3 times the sales in smartphones mean three times more players for CandyCrush?
10 times more condoms sales mean 10 times less porn watched?
Maybe people are opening bank account because they need simply need a bank account for other stuff, not for crypto, let alone the simple fact of bitcoin from being a bank killer turning into something that requires a bank account, ironic.

But let's look at the numbers right?
So 44 million bank account involved in crypto in Nigeria.

- Paxful:
Ups, only 1.3m accounts! Accounts!
Remember that there are 3 million bitcointalk accounts and 250k active users, but let's leave it like that.

Localbitcoin:
Obviously less than Paxful and with a 10 million per month volume even 1 million users would lead to an average of 10$, so it would be safe to assume the real number is probably 10 times less, but let's stick to 1 million.

Luno:
Claims 5.4 million accounts worldwide.
Now with the volume of $68,741,823 that would mean Binance with $21,660,485,831 would have 1.5 billion.
So in reality those accounts would be a few hundred thousand and only a part of them in Nigeria. But let's stick to 5 million.

So you still have 37 million to go, and I assumed no accounts on multiple platforms so the majority of all that is left must be on Binance.
Let's get over the fact that Nigeria doesn't lead the number of accounts on Binance, Binance itself claims there are only 100 million cryptos users in the world, and no, all of Africa is the lowest market by a number of users from all regions except Australia.

So 40 million Nigerians opening a bank account just to trade crypto? No, that's bs!
But look at the bright side, actually two bright sides:

1) If the numbers are as I speak there is ten times more place to grow.
2) It's far better to think there are only 1 million maximum users from Nigeria. If you were 40 million and the government would close your bank accounts with zero protests on the streets, it would also mean you have some extra 40 million sheep who only know how to obey!

Less keyboard patriotism more real-life action, right?

Noo noo please don't give me this Nigeria is the second leading active users on Binance, Luno, Paxful, Localbitcoin..etc. Nigeria has about 111million citizens with an active bank account and I'm very sure 40% of those  accounts are being used for crypto. There must be a drop in GDP don't tell me otherwise

Unfortunately the true fact is that if banks are not allowing anything like this, it is all gone, and you have to accept that it will be dead in a very quick matter. However reality is that there are banks that blocks accounts yet there are banks that not only support it, but also invest into crypto as well.

So, we can't say that every bank has an approach, some banks are looking at it like it is a good thing and some of them are looking at it like it is a bad thing, there is really no official situation just yet.

I personally think that the best way to go would be helping banks realize what they are missing out, all crypto people that uses those banks could get their money out of that bank and move to another bank and as a reason you could write "not friendly towards cryptos" and that bank may realize that they have done a mistake that way because all banks care about money in their accounts.

That's like people from the tobacco industry claiming they bring up 10% of the GDP, and if people stop smoking will they burn their money not spend on cigarettes or spend them on something else? How many Nigerians had bank accounts only for transacting cryptos? And don't come with the million numbers cause you all know it's not true.


Let me be the bearer of bad news, despite all that cultists are shouting every second.

If (!) and here is the big IF,  they want to shut down all trading, including p2p done via banks they can do this in a matter of days.
People have the wrong impression that by sending individual payments via banks they can obfuscate what that payment is about, it makes sense the first moment but not so much the second one.

I've traded for a while on LB, I was making like 100+ transactions to different people a month, guess how many I've made since I quit? 1 or two a year!
Banks can simply run a query on their database to see who does 50+ a month to different people (not family, not owning a business, not declaring income) and in a few seconds, they have all the names of individuals that might deal in crypto and as a bonus other suspicious activities.
Check if those accounts interlink themselves, check the sums, check the (whatever IRS version you have for individual revenues)  and here you have them, a matter of a few days of work, and you probably have identified 90% of the traders in the country that use banks and with a click annihilate them.

There is no hiding in a centralized system with an activity that stands out this much!
If they want (Again, big IF) to enforce and totally cripple trading they can, the only thing they can't stop would be face2face transactions, but that's like returning to the stone age, and the risk of getting acquainted with an undercover cop is the cherry on top.

The way out of this is not finding ways to avoid the ban, trying to weasel the way out but change what is wrong in the first place, the legislation.
If you allow them an abuse the next one will be just around the corner.

Maybe they think crypto could be a double edged sword more specifically for developing country economy where the money could escape from the countries' economy easily through the use of crypto but I don't honestly think that's enough justification to limit their citizen of their own right to own asset like crypto.
Sometimes country take a step that doesn't make sense at all it's confusing.

Another dumb move from a central bank.

The ban will be completely non-enforceable and will simply create more alternative trading platforms other than regulated ones.

This is precisely what happened with the RBI's ban on cryptos. All they did was wipe out a significant portion of the regulated crypto industry, whilst driving people to P2P platforms such as LBC. This will be no different.