The Central Bank of Nigeria stated that it has downloaded nearly 500,000 electronic Naira wallets a few weeks after Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari officially launched the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

E-Naira’s initial trading volume

In addition to the 488,000 wallets that have been downloaded, Osita Nwanisobi, a spokesperson for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), was quoted confirming that a total of 78,000 merchants from 160 countries/regions are now registered as part of the e-wallet. -Naira Ecosystem.

Although CBDC seems to be an early success, report Bloomberg quoted Nwanisobi as saying that since its launch, only $150,000 (62 million naira) worth of digital currency has been traded. However, on the other hand, Nigerians traded about 60,215 Bitcoins between 2017 and 2020, which are currently worth more than 3.6 billion U.S. dollars.

According to the report, this transaction volume is the largest outside the United States, indicating that cryptocurrency has become an important substitute for the devaluation of the naira.As before Report According to a Bitcoin.com news report, some Nigerians working abroad now prefer to send money home via Bitcoin.Others are using top cryptocurrencies for cross-border payments, and some are now using Bitcoin To hedge against inflation.

Continue to try to restrict the use of cryptocurrencies

However, as part of efforts to limit further growth and interest in cryptocurrencies, CBN initially director Financial institutions cut off cryptocurrency entities from the banking system. The launch of e-naira is the first CBDC in Africa and is the latest attempt by CBN to attract Nigerians away from cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

However, despite these efforts, a study by Chainalysis still found that Nigeria is one of the largest percentage of retail users conducting cryptocurrency transactions under $10,000.

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