Cryptocurrency ban: It’s our responsibility to protect Nigerians – Emefiele

The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele told the Senate that the ban placed on cryptocurrency transactions was a step to protect Nigerians involved in banking.

Emefiele explained the rationale behind the CBN’s directive to commercial banks to stop accounts meant for cryptocurrency.

The CBN Governor, who appeared before the Joint Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and Financial Institutions and Capital Market and ICT on Tuesday, noted that banking anywhere is about transparency, stating that Nigerians should be happy about the ban.

According to him, Nigerians who have nothing to hide shouldn’t complain about the apex bank’s decision, noting that cryptocurrency was a currency issued by largely unknown, unregulated elements using computer that are basically encrypted.

He said transactions on cryptocurrency was designed to hide information about the transactions and the operators, adding the cryptocurrency model was created out of a thin air.

“Cryptocurrency is used to describe the activities of traders in an electronic dark world where transactions are extremely opaque, not visible and not transparent.

“These are people who deal in transactions that do not want to be trailed.

“The definitions of cryptocurrency was scary enough to scare anxiety for any regulator or Central Banker in any part of the world and that is the reason, virtually all regulators in the world did not recognise it.”

Senate had on Feb.11 at plenary mandated its joint committees to invite the CBN Governor, and Director General of Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) to brief the committee on circumstances leading to ban on cryptocurrency transactions.