The President of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Godwin Emefiele claimed that most cryptocurrency transactions are illegal. He also asserted that there is no room for cryptocurrency in Nigeria’s banking industry.

Retaliation against Endsars’ protest claims

In his latest anti-cryptocurrency salvo, Publish However, before Punch, Emefiele appeared to refute CBN’s sudden decision to exclude cryptocurrency entities from the banking system in order to punish the industry for its support of the Endsars protests.

When CBN froze the bank accounts of individuals involved in organizing the Endsars protest at the end of 2020, the protest leaders began to demand Donate via BitcoinAccording to Bitcoin.com News, this shift in donations to Bitcoin eventually allowed the organizers to continue to fund the protests.

Therefore, when CBN suddenly announced Repel Among the cryptocurrency entities from the banking ecosystem, some observers in Nigeria speculated that the decision was made because the central bank failed to prevent the flow of funds to the organizers of the Endsars protest.

Emefeller’s point of view

However, in response to these claims, the report cited Emefiele, explaining why CBN generally opposes cryptocurrency transactions.

“As you said, the Endsars issue appeared in October 2020. We raised the issue that we will not provide our banking and payment system space to those involved in the cryptocurrency business because we believe that the transactions conducted there are Illegal,” he explained.

Emefiele subsequently stated that CBN, like many of its surrounding peers, does not support cryptocurrency transactions because they are encrypted and cannot be decrypted by any central bank. He said:

Look at it this way: What can be hidden? Why are transactions so hidden? Why are they encrypted? If I make a transaction and the regulator or security agency wants to see the nature of the transaction, these (transactions) cannot be encrypted to let people know what happened. This means that cryptocurrency is a highly illegal product embedded.

In fact, according to Emefiele, donations to the Endsars movement have nothing to do with the CBN directive of February 5, 2021. Emefiele explained that, on the contrary, the directive is consistent with the position taken by many central banks around the world.

Do you agree with Emefiele’s remarks about cryptocurrency? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

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