Mr Godwin Emefiele, the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), says the Bank’s decision to prohibit deposit money banks, non-banking institutions, and other financial institutions from facilitating trading and dealings in cryptocurrency is in the best interest of Nigerian depositors and the country’s financial system.
Mr Emefiele made the declaration on Tuesday, February 23, 2021, while briefing a joint Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions; ICT and Cybercrime; and Capital Market, on its directive to institutions under its regulation.
“Cryptocurrency is not legitimate money because it is not created or backed by any Central Bank. Cryptocurrency has no place in our monetary system at this time and cryptocurrency transactions should not be carried out through the Nigerian banking system.
Let me state that this decision is in the best interest of every well meaning Nigerian, who have nothing to hide and is happy to have traceable and transparent dealings in our financial system. 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.
CBN has a major and primary responsibility as a primary regulator to protect activities of actors, bank stakeholders and uninformed actors in the financial system from other actors who may wish to take advantage of their lack or limited knowledge to rip off the uninformed. And that is the reason we have banned all banks to desist from operating accounts for cryptocurrency dealers in Nigeria,” he said.
