Topic: Cryptocurrency in Nigeria: From ban to taxation (Read 299 times)

People who assert that cryptocurrency cannot be stopped actually have no concept how simple it would be for governments to do so. Any equivalent measures enacted in the US or even throughout Europe would immediately throw us back ten years.

If there is anything we need to concentrate on, it is preventing politicians from using cryptocurrency as a toy to exploit and control as they choose rather than adoption at breakneck pace.

Never forget that the government is a criminal organization. The fact that trust in government is at its lowest point in decades makes me happy.

This is what they could have considered a long time ago: taxing the crypto exchanges and projects in which Nigerians are partners, or will I say Nigeria is allowed to use their service just as other developed countries are doing, rather than asking banks to restrict themselves from involving themselves in crypto-related transactions? This could have really been a way of raising funds for the federation.

I don't know how effective the taxes will be because this country always has ways of invading things, so tax evasion won't be hard. Let them just pass the bill into law, and their purpose should be defined. Let them know how to task individuals and how to tax exchanges and other big crypto-related platforms.

Individually, those who know their way around might find ways of avoiding those tax payments, especially when the amount involved is not worth it, but those exchanges won't, no matter how little they will still have to drop something at the end of the year.

For di question of weda di government go tax individuals or di exchanges, tax na tax, even if dem no tax individuals wey de trade with cryptocurrencies, wen dem tax di exchanges di exchanges go collect am as higher fees from di individuals or as value added tax. E just be like say you go buy something for store, dem don already comot di tax of di product before you buy am. Personally I for no mind di taxation, evendo say e de bite for body, but you go get rest of mind say you no get problems with di authority. Hopefully as I don mention for another topic, CBN go see di light and comot dat ban on bitcoin, wey de give better tin bad name. Tax in itself no bad, so far wayo no de am

Okay I agree that buhari really suffered us but that doesn't mean that this tenure is actually better off after all they are still from the same secret cult @same party and same carcus. But in we Nigerian are all just expecting some kind of good news about the administration that why people are being optimistic about it at this early stage and if I could remember vividly its same Nigerian that castigated the present President since from his days of campaign.

My brother you can't compare Goodluck tenure to Buhari regime. Buhari came suffer us. And im success. This new administration might be better of. The way things are handle right now . It might be favourable to the citizens. We still pray that the cost of living should be reduced to bearish minimum level for the poor in the country.

I don't know why the sequence tend to trend in  every Nigerian mindset which is that the previous adminstration did beta than the current one but na only this buhari regime nai people just dey think opposite of the mata because we don really suffer well well, but I think its rather too early to saying thing about this adminstration. But I also believe that goodluck tenure was also an extortion of Nigerian funds from different angles.

Yes, that's exactly what it literally means, because before the ban of Bitcoin, users could it use Visa or Master cards to buy Bitcoin directly from online exchanges such as "Binance, Ramitano & e.t.c" & not have your account place under restriction if found to have done a crypto related transactions, unlike now that is mostly done through p2p and can't include a crypto related words while executing a transaction.

Yes, you are on point on what you just said, because it is only people who has funds on centralized exchanges that will be taxed, while people who has Bitcoin in non-custodian wallets and uses only decentralized exchange will be able to bypass this taxation.

Dat act wey di former president signed, I no sure sae dis present president go even use am. Tinubu na progressivist so anything wey no resemble im, im no dey use am. If Nigerian government won dey tax cryptocurrency den let dem convert E-naira to exchange platforms so dat piple go visit am well well. Den dem fit collect their tax from there. Nigeria just need good working Economics team wey go make things very good for di country.

Di best ecoonomics team wey e don come to this country nai be Goodluck time. Omen that team was very good.

When you are in a confused country where people don't know what they really want. They keep on making up and down decisions; in the first instance, there was no tangible reason for them to ban cryptocurrency, just because the young population was gaining financial independence from the government through cryptocurrency.

After reading the news about crypto taxation in Nigeria, I asked myself, what changed why are they interested in Bitcoin or the cryptocurrency market could it be that it is because Nigeria is in top ten in terms of the percentage of the population that owns cryptocurrency.  About 10.3 percent of our population owns cryptocurrency. That is like 22 million Nigerians own cryptocurrency¹. Also remember that as of September 3, 2022, Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA) announced partnership with Binance so that they can take advantage of a near trillion dollar virtual economy in blockchains and digital economy².


At this point, it should be obvious why the federal government stated now that cryptocurrency will be taxed in Nigeria. The federal government if successful, will make a lot of money from this. The first hurdle for them is to who has cryptocurrency and who doesn't. One may argue that they may use KYC from Binance exchange platform. They can't do that for non-KYC required wallets like the Electrum wallet. Well I am interested in see how it goes.

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1. https://triple-a.io/crypto-ownership-nigeria-2022/
2. https://techpoint.africa/2022/09/15/nigeria-biance-virtual-free-zone/#:~:text=On%20Saturday%2C%20September%203%2C%202022,Free%20Zone%20in%20West%20Africa.

It's way better to be taxed right now, because it means and makes cryptocurrency legal. It also makes for more opportunities for economic growth and expansion, less unemployment and new users will join the network, small businesses and entrepreneurs who understand cryptocurrency would be able to leverage it to assist their businesses in terms of payments and subscriptions and grow significantly without reliance on the meager profit or earnings from sitting at a white collar job inorder to sustain such a business. Exposed minds and those in diaspora with great ideas or with intentions to relocate back home would be able to also rely on cryptocurrency services for effective application.

Although, charges would become high, the taxation will encourage better exchange services to innovate and compete in the market to offer better service and new strategies would be formed by traders to save charge cost and other previous unnecessary expenses.

Finally, Nigeria government din see say them no fit stop crypto for we country na e make them come up with tax for crypto. Already we don dey inside the game,so if the new government serious for this matter,the way banks use dey pay task from customers transaction,I believe say na that same way den go tell this exchange them to operate. Na to pay the tax,if na wet in den want,so that we go fit dey do our transactions peacefully. But e no go easy for them too to execute this plans and begin benefit from am because Nigeria government no be talk na do government. Anyhow the exchange won use task us na less to us.

It's even more difficult for government to tax people in the physical business than online because Nigeria already has data collection issues and that makes it difficult taxing physical business and thus we have a lot of tax invaders, but in the case of joining hands with these exchanges to tax crypto traders ,It will be easy for them to achieve their goal if they mean business and wants the crypto exchanges to cooperate, these exchanges already have existing datas of these individuals trading in their platforms through KYC registration process.
For instance ,They've had huge amount of success in taxing the mobile phone users in the country with the help of Network operators in the country like MTN and Airtel.

E easy to achieved na, first dem go demand everybody wey dey use the platform to complete KYC and the crypto platform go register under SEC. Belike self na why SEC dun give Binance Nigeria strike one to do fast come register under the SEC. Dem go fit tax us by making sure these platforms collect tax immediately we dey do withdrawal form the exchange. E just belike when you go chop for all this fancy restaurant them, usually if you look your bill wey you get, you go see the tax wey dem dey collect and e dey go government (nobi there pocket). Dem no go tell you about the extra tax until you dun chop finish although e no dey too cost.

The crypto platforms go just send alert to all their customers to inform them about the new laws and since e go dey everywhere we no go get choice but to just use the platforms like that and they pay the tax (but make we no fear as I believe e go be very small amount them). If be small percentage self for each withdrawal so poor man dey saved, na the rich dem go dey milk although e no go mean much to them too but I doubt we'll be able to reach this stages as e go mean Nigerian dun dey accept cryptocurency small small. All this one fit be talk talk matter, you know e no dey hard us as our government sabi talk more than dey do things.

I already did at the bottom of my post.

Actually, it's was one of the first local exchanges that crossed my mind when I was initially writing this topic... but I don comot am make peace dey 😃

Yeah mate sorry I just hard a reread now I guess my browser tab redirected me to a different policy I was reading earlier, that is why I made that assumption, I accepted my mistakes as I can see we're the inclusion of digital assets, after the column that contains capital gains tax and indeed cryptocurrency was mentioned there, I will edit my earlier comment to fir in the conversation, since this topic is going to trigger up a lot of discussions and regards to this policy analysis, since in concerned our primary topic of discussion here on bitcointalk, (cryptocurrency).

Bit I hope this policy will make provision for decentralized cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and I hope what the policy referred to as cryptocurrency is not CBDC like the e-naira and the rest.

That is not correct.

Read what is in the image again or read it directly from the source. That is the source and it is 10% on capital gain which does not need to be included before we should know from how it is written.

Hey mate, maybe you should have a deep read through the bill once again,  cryptocurrency or other digital assets are not mentioned in the bill and that is a clear indication that the bill will have to undergo a reform that will include cryptocurrency and other digital asset and decentralized assets like Bitcoin will be placed in the various categories.

All the same, I am not surprised why cryptocurrencies are not mentioned in the act after all this policy is a policy of the past administration whose central bank governor now suspended is gullible enough to believe that cryptocurrency is a threat to the government control of the financial sector, we're as he is now accused of terrorism financing which is the worst form of money laundering.

Which means it is not the right time to mention Patricia. The exchange is not functioning right now and the exchange hold customers funds, while we do not know if the exchange is going to pay it or not. I am surprised that you have not excluded the exchange.


https://pwcnigeria.typepad.com/files/2022-finance-bill_hor.pdf



I just went through it as fast as possible, I have no time to read it in details yet, but I saw that cryptocurrencies are mentioned under chargeable assets.

First since the creation of this thread I have gone into research to see the financial act and what it entails because I am sure cryptocurrency is not mentioned their in and I wanted to ask the ops to share a link to the information he posted, because nigeria as a country really need a special policy frame work dedicated to digital currencies inclusive of Decentrslized assets e.g Bitcoin ethereuem and other cryptocurrencies that operate within the blokchain technology and their remittance into the nigeria economy, other important point to note os that decetnrized cryptocurrencies their transactions are hard to trace and unless the holder use a centralized exchange platforms then his transaction can be traced and taxed, but aside from that he can invade tax as long as he continues to hold bitcoin just as an asset.

On the issue of banks and cryptocurrency transactions, I guess the misunderstanding came from the now suspended CBN governor, who introduced so many failed financial policy that most likely 90% failed e.g, the E-naira policy and the currency swap/ cashless policy scheme,  he is also the initiator of the bank vs cryptocurrency transaction ban, if not before the ban, the bank does not have any problem with cryptocurrency transaction and as a matter of fact, one can buy Bitcoin through union bank back then.