Topic: It’s clear that the Nigerian Government cannot stop Bitcoin (Read 366 times)

This is exactly where Bitcoin has the biggest impact - the poor countries where rampaging inflation is burdening people's lives and the economic environment is "caged" by a corrupt government.
Also hat $185mm is just what has been run through the Paxful platform. You can imagine that a lot more has been transacted f2f and through other channels.

Yes, after the banning of crypto exchange on Nigerian Bank services, at the risk of severe penalties and prohibiting all institutions and banks from discontinuing crypto services.
Instead, it makes bitcoin out of control and the more it is banned, the more resistance there will be.
because there is continued emphasis, CBN (Central Bank of Nigeria) gives a signal that it will re-legalize crypto even though there has been no clear signal about the previous ban on institutions. but obviously this will bring fresh air that re-usability will happen, it will not be easy to implement a crypto ban if everyone is used to doing that.
we will see the further development of this country and it will be clear that crypto is the best way.

Bitcoin decentralized and anonymous features made it absolutely impossible for any government to successfully wage any war on crypto and win, Nigeria tried to ban bitcoin but unsuccessful, they stopped crypto start-ups who are linked with banks from transactions and threatened them with freezing their account, however Binance, Paxful etc came to the rescue individual Bitcoin users transact crypto huge of crypto via P2P daily, though transfer of fiat to sellers or buyers is done through the banks without mentioning Crypto as remark in the transaction.

There were many governments before that tried to stop bitcoin but failed.  There will be more governments in the future who will try to stop this popularity of bitcoin and they will fail too. Sooner or later the government will have to accept this digital currency, so those governments like El Salvador will be remembered as a pioneer when bitcoin is rolled out everywhere in the world.

I think he is simply repeating what the article says, which is paxful propaganda, rather than an objective description of the facts. It would make more sense that statement last year, when the price was going up and even a fool could make money.

But despite the price drop there are still people making money. There are some Nigerians on the forum who make money with signature campaigns or being campaign managers, for example. I don't rule out that there are also those outside this forum who are doing something related to cryptocurrencies that pays them more than the average salary there.

Although I doubt very much that it will be massive, so I share your skepticism.

And the streak will continue.  The Nigerian government won't be the first or last to fail at attempting to stop bitcoin, need to take a page out of the book from the countries that have gotten on board.  I believe the floodgates will be busted open after the next bull run as you have a quite a few countries that want to see how things play out with El Salvador before jumping on the bandwagon.

This is true not only for the Nigerians but also for every developing country. There are many countries in Asia where the public wants to adopt bitcoin but the government never encourages them. One of the examples is my country Pakistan, where the government never allowed crypto to be used as a means of transaction and people are afraid to do bitcoin P2P transactions through banks because if caught can lead to legal actions. We can't keep the mining equipment and everything related to crypto is not encouraged in the country.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies don't create stable and well-paying jobs, so I wouldn't say that they get people out of poverty - they alleviate poverty when there are bull markets and people manage to make some money from trading, but this isn't a long-term solution to poverty. You can't lift Nigeria to the level of developed countries by having its people buy Bitcoin, that's not how economics work.

When there arise an opportunity, it is good to make use of it. For now, it has got high usage all around amidst the opposition from the government creating eNaira. The government haven't regulated the market and recently saw about bitcoin acceptance in a gas station done by a forum user. I'm not sure whether this is done in a legal way or not, but this is turning to be a big market. Government can look for a solution out of its usage.

Nigerian court indirectly recognizes Bitcoin as a legal currency.
 Lolz. True that. When a govt can't stop the progress of BTC, they bring regulations to see of they can curb it. The ban of these crypto currencies affected Nigeria's economy as losses of up to #104.02m ($250,600) was recorded via Twitter.
 CBN had better rethink it's stance on crypto because with the recent downturn in BTC prices, traders still manage to make profit in both trends ( bullish or bearish).

I remember that Bitcoin is very popular in Nigeria, and I'm not surprised it's getting even more so. What does make me wonder is that instead of seizing the opportunity and creating favorable conditions for the crypto industry to prosper in this country and bring money to the budget, the government hasn't been friendly toward Bitcoin. Creating eNaira is one thing, but considering a ban or some highly restrictive policies is a bit ridiculous, given that there's demand for cryptos there and it's not like Nigeria has much to lose (it has serious economic problems, so maybe taking a risk is worth it).

It is hardly shocking that the Nigerian government is powerless to halt cryptocurrency use in the nation. When a nation is unable to meet the demands of its people, those people will look elsewhere. Massive turmoil would be caused in Nigeria if the government continues to forbid residents from using cryptocurrencies. When you take away someone's means of subsistence without providing them with an alternative, that person will eventually become enraged and will undoubtedly retaliate. The government of Nigeria cannot halt the use of bitcoin; it will continue to function.

The whole point is that Bitcoin is international and a government is only national. So a national government can only stop bitcoin in one country but never internationally. Also bitcoin is not evil so there are more important regulations and in the end bitcoin will never be stopped.

No any government in the world can stop bitcoin not to talk about Nigeria government, China which is not a third world country had tried it several times but they did not succeed, and at the end what they will do is to finally agree and make the adoption of bitcoin, like other countries are doing, at least we've seen some country in Africa that are adopting bitcoin

Governments can not stop Bitcoin. Not only Nigerian government. They will try more and harder but they won't succeed. If Bitcoin is something is not built by a technology that changes the world, government can ban it.

Because, in reality Bitcoin is the successful cryptocurrency that teach the world about decentralization, peer to peer transaction and have your own keys. Governments have no good reasons to ban it and if they try go ban it, failures are waiting.

https://www.usefultulips.org/combined_NGN_Page.html

We can say that these are the results of the first quarter of this year and the fourth quarter of last year, all of which were positive and at a good rise in the price of Bitcoin, so perhaps the transfers of individuals and workers to their families in Nigeria, which is better than dealing through banking methods due to the easy profits that have been achieved.

I expect the results to be completely different during the second and third quarters of this year, and I also do not think that the Nigerian government is serious about implementing a ban on cryptocurrencies.

Don't take Paxful data alone and drop it on other platforms.

Or maybe you could look at it this way, he had been unjustly arrested and had committed no crime because the Government was against Cryptocurrencies in the country, but then he hired some good lawyers and won the case

It's not only Nigerian Nigerian government, no government can stop or control bitcoin. There's only way to do it - stop the internet! But stopping the internet can have severe consequences so no country would risk doing that for the sake of stopping bitcoin.

I just hope that governments around the world understand this fact that bitcoin is beyond their control. So instead of trying to ban them, they should focus of including bitcoin in to their mainstream economy.

I am not surprised. Nobody can stop bitcoin. Governments, central banks, politicians, police, army, hackers, academics... Nobody. That's the whole point of decentralization. Once it is out of the bottle, you can't put it back in. They may stop crypto from interacting with FIAT though because FIAT is centralized and the central banks control it. That would harm crypto for a while but in the long term crypto would still win.

I agree with you here but I don't think the OP was looking at it from that angle, comparing it to other fiat pairs in different exchanges but just the impact it has had on the citizens as in this statement, I know a few people that don't have jobs for a long while now but mostly live on this cryptocurrency trading and I want to believe that even now that the price has dipped, those people are not just going to stop trading altogether.

When a the government in power can not meet up to the expectations of her citizens, the citizens resolves to an alternative means of survival. This is the case of Nigerians I guess. Bracing bitcoin was a good move by Nigerians and it is paying or rewarding them. Currently now the world is going through  economic crisis and it is a hard time in most countries. However, this has made many to opt for crypto as alternative means of survival.No matter the move of any government, they can not stop the bitcoin movement. As the identity of the founder of bitcoin is unknown, it would be very difficult for any government to fight bitcoin to extinct.

It’s all due to the decentralised nature of Bitcoins. As Bitcoins cannot be controlled by any government, so no one can stop it or impose tax on it.
This is not only happening in Nigeria, but happening in all the countries where Bitcoins are not legalised yet.
In order to counter this, I have heard many countries are creating their own digital currency and are planning to impose tax on it.
Nevertheless as Bitcoins can only be controlled by it’s holder only, so no one can do nothing to the Bitcoins.
And seeing the stats in Paxful regarding the Nigerian people, it feels great.
Hoping more people to join this crypto world from all over the Earth.

It's not just about the Nigerian government because even a very strong and communist like China can not make the bitcoin stop due to the decentralization of bitcoin, as far as I know, they are many bitcoins in Nigeria, and suspending bitcoin transactions cannot be a solution for the Nigerian government, because all they can do is to suspend the fiat to bitcoin and cryptocurrency transaction and blocking maybe even blocking any bitcoin and cryptocurrency services there but still people can do local bitcoin transactions in person while the governments cannot make them stop.

It is actually really not that high, since the average income in Nigeria is 1136.20 US Dollars which is not to bad. Still it is very good that there is a local exchange and I hope it is truthworty so in the next bull market many more people can easily enter.

Being a Nigerian myself, I totally see things and understand perfectly from OP's perspective, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general have helped a lot of Nigerians get out of poverty, those that aren't rich yet are also doing quite well through investing, buying and selling cryptocurrencies on different exchanges, I don't want to go into details of my story for when i will tell it in full is coming, but I will say that i am a living testimony to the various levels, degrees and types of freedom Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general have brought to Nigerians.

When the Central Bank of Nigeria announced the ban on Bitcoin and all cryptocurrency related transactions, i personally didn't panic cus I knew for sure that the ban wasn't going to stand, a government that does not care for its citizens neither do they care for their future, and one thing that have given hope for the future to a lot of Nigerians is Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency.

Isn't that 185 million in 90 days, 2 million a day, or about 25 times lower than just the EUR/BTC pair on Kraken for example?


Can you please describe how an asset that is losing value is helping somebody minimize the effects of inflation and unemployment cause it realizes puzzles me!
Oh and if you think that by trading on Paxum, it simply means you're making money by selling coins at a premium, so, basically you're taking money from somebody else who will have to deal with the loss until the market grows, which ain't happening right now.

A report by Paxful a cryptocurrency trading platform showed that the volume of money sent by Nigerians via it's network doubled from October 2021 to May 2022. While global deposit volume increased five times since the platform launched its integration on the Lightning Network in September 2021. The firm stated that Nigerians traded at least N77.75bn ($185m) worth of Bitcoin in the first three months of this year, which is a 5.71 per cent increase from the N73.54bn worth of Bitcoin that was traded in the corresponding period of 2021. Last year a report by Chainalysis disclosed that nation is the sixth leading nation in the world in terms of crypto adoption. While recently KuCoin, a crypto exchange reported that about 33.4 million Nigerians traded or owned crypto assets.

Nigerian Bitcoiners achieved these entire feats despite the bearish mode of Bitcoin and Central Bank of Nigeria restrictions. In February of 2021, the CBN asked banks in the nation to stop transacting in and with entities dealing in crypto assets. In fact doing that attracts a hug fine that would definitely affect that bank’s operations.
  
Recently a Nigerian Bitcoin trading Linus Williams Ifejika, aka Blord floored the Nigerian government anti-corruption agency called the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in court. He was arrested on August 31, 2020 an accused of internet fraud and his properties were seized. After a twenty four months running battle with the anti-graft agency, the bitcoin trader won his case in court and all his belongings were released. This entails that even the Nigerian court indirectly recognizes Bitcoin as a legal currency.

A country that is ravaged by inflation, unemployment and high cost of financial transactions and Bitcoin directly or indirectly assists most young Nigerians to minimize the impact of these challenges (this was before the drop in price of Bitcoin). The government should have known by now that Bitcoin has come to stay in Nigerian and they don’t need a soothsayer to inform them that it is time to give up and change their stance.