Bitcoin Forum

Binance, the cryptocurrency exchange has restricted Nigerian users account to ensure users security and to protect the community from fraudulent activities saying is for a good reason. What is ur say about this.
Can this action yeild a better result?
Can Binance truly protect Nigerian community from fraudulent activities?

What kind of restriction are they imposing to Nigerian accounts? I know binance has compulsory KYC so they will know who are their Nigerian users but any additional restriction they are not allowed to do?
And also even if they have strict rules about Nigerian accounts, scammers can always operate outside Binance. So they may lessen the scamming under their platform but outside, they have no control of that.

Want to make sure what you mean is the same with this news https://cryptocurrencybazaar4u.io/2022/01/31/heres-why-binance-froze-the-accounts-of-281-crypto-users-from-nigeria/
If true, it has been explained that it is about complying with AML regulations, and some frozen accounts already re-accessed by their owners.

If Binance can't protect their Nigerian users from fraudulent activities they will loss much because Nigeria is an African country that has a many crypto user.

We should not forget that binance is a centralized exchanges, it shouldn't really be the point of focus rather than means the government and the exchanges themselves are having full control.

Yes for the government or the people that told binance to do so, they will see some evidence that some freezed accounts perform illegal activities.

Be careful of exchanges, some people even still use bank and fiat to defraud people, there is no complete protection from second party, the complete protection is from the first party which is you.

Binance is a centralized platform and therefore when you use them, you agree to their terms of use^[1] and therefore they actually have the money on your behalf and as soon as you violate their usage regulations the account will be frozen.

The strictness of the regulations will be due to the pressure of the regulatory authorities and the difficulty of obtaining licenses, which makes them scrutinize all transactions and accounts, and the possibility of cancelling the account if any abnormal activity occurs.

Therefore, it is their duty to maintain a society free of scam and money laundering, especially after KYC has become mandatory.


[1] https://www.binance.com/en/terms

How can it help to their citizens? yeah fraudulent activity is there but this is normal if we talk about money since there are so many bad people always do this just to get money. Fraudulent activities happen with fiat to so its crazy that their government think about that since they are taking their freedom to decide on what they like and they lose opportunity to change their lives by adopting or using those platform or the cryptocurrency it self if they are targetting it.

Binance is blocking , but they are just following the law. Look:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-30/binance-restricts-nigerian-customer-accounts-on-security-concern

I believe your question should be "Can government truly proctect Nigerian community" not Binance.

 binance just have to follow government orders or leave the country...

They also say that it is hard to get dollars locally in Nigeria, and nigerians are trying to protect themselves from inflation. So, doesn't look like the government is protecting anyone, as they banned crypto :

https://www.reuters.com/technology/crypto-giant-binance-restricts-281-nigerian-accounts-2022-01-30/

Okay, so first of all, from what I read and others also pointed it out, we're talking about less than 300 accounts being frozen. While hypothetically alarming because they can freeze more, it's such a small amount that I think it's reasonable to assume that they weren't restricted without any reasons, and there were indeed some suspicious activities on these accounts, or they didn't comply with the current terms of using Binance. Binance isn't interested in losing customers, so they wouldn't block accounts because they simply feel like it. But they do take legislations very seriously and try to comply the best they can, so the authorities don't shut them down.

Froze people account especially if the account still have coins is never a good action. What if they're wrongly freeze account? It shouldn't be about the IP is Nigerian user, but it should based on the activities and how it's really suspicious. It's really sad if a good Nigerian citizen bought Bitcoin with his paycheck because he's really trust Bitcoin as long term investment, but his money is gone after Binance froze his account.

It's sad over 281 citizens in Nigeria fell victim of this. This is why storing your coin in a non-custodial wallet will save the unnecessary KYC verification limitations. At this point there is nothing else the victims can do other than have their accounts properly verified so they can gain back full access to their wallets. Deeply Africans need a well structured decentralized exchange to counter this pressing issues with government regulations and their enslaved centralized exchanges

Binance (or any other exchange) doesn't care if your business is clean or dirty. As long as you pay them commissions, you are free to use the platform. If they don't do this freeze, they will lose the biggest customer in Africa for not meeting the demands of the legal authorities. In any case, it doesn't mean they like this incident where they have to get bad responses from affected customers and concerns to global customers.

To be honest, there really is no miracle method that'll be able to protect everyone from all fraudulent activities. But even so, there are a wide variety of ways to reduce the number of these fraudulent activities. Still though it depends on a country's regulations on how binamce and all the other centralized exchanges set up their terms of use. Which is why different countries despite having the same centralized exchange ( for example binance) still has different rules for every user that avails their services.

The government bann cryptocurrency and binance is just following the laws of the government to which case binance will prohibit Nigerians from registering. The old accounts however should have given time to withdraw their funds or at least turn their crypto to stablecoin until money laundering investigation is over.

What binance did was quite surprising to all of us, but I think what binance did was the right thing to protect their users, and it's clear that all this time binance has required its users to do KYC as a way to prevent money laundering, of course It can be said that if the fault lies not entirely with the binance platform, it is the user who may actually be neglecting the obligation to do KYC all this time.

No one can actually protect any country from frauds. One have to understand the fact that it's the responsibility of the government to make the measures stricter but unfortunately in this case the government of Nigeria is itself very corrupt therefore nothing can be done. Binance can try to make those things better but how far can it go?
KYC is honestly everywhere now, I don't understand why people try to avoid it but continue to use the wallet this might result in long term probelms.

When cryptos were banned in India people were given time to withdraw their funds but at the end of the day, here the government is making them loose their money in middle of a pandemic in a country with dying economy.

People need to use different wallets which might be hidden without KYC it's still gonna be used in Nigeria for sure. Government is not capable of banning bitcoins.

I was left with the impression that Nigeria banned the cryptocurrency industry some time ago? Has that changed?

I think the same, binance is just following the law, we may like it or not but they do not really have any option but to do it or they will face consequences themselves, I know that people would prefer that we could go back to a point in time in which you did not needed to go through KYC in every single centralized platform, however this is not possible anymore.

Governments are seeing in bitcoin a rival they cannot let live and as such they are doing everything they can to make the lives of bitcoin holders as difficult as they can, and this includes regulations and in some cases outright bans.

Probably the owners of the restricted accounts were into some form of illegal trading activities, I trust that binance can't just wake up one morning and decide to restrict several accounts of their customers for no just curse.
Am a Nigerian and I own and trade with my verified binance account, immediately I saw the news, I quickly checked and I can still access my account like always, so those who were restricted probably have one or two offences they've committed which is why they were restricted.

Considering Nigeria is one of the top crypto using nations in the entire world, I am sure that Binance will do everything in their power to keep them. They want to follow the rules set by the government but they also want to make sure that they are doing everything in their power to keep every single user and not lose it to their competition there.

When there is a good amount of money to be made from somewhere, you push the limits of what is legal, you do not outright do something illegal but you do something that you can defend in court at least, even if it comes down to that. This is why I am sure that they will find ways and loopholes in the laws that they will abuse as much as they can in order to get as many customers as they can.

The trading fee is a big part of their deal and they are making so much profit from only the Nigerian people alone, globally they make even more but they can't just say "we have enough" and give up an entire nation.

This is a lesson that we can teach ourselves that we are always good to have our coins saved by ourselves in our wallet. Some people have coins they don't trade in exchanges and is there like that. But KYC is going against the decentralised anonymous system in the first part to start with it.

Nigeria has a big history in cryptosystem world right now and CZ knew that already so if they are restricting some accounts for some time its for the best, you should look into how many Nigerians are into crypto this days the number is big.

thinking that Nigeria is one of the countries with the largest crypto users in the world, Binance might be able to revitalize the crypto community in the country with some actions like account freeze, etc. But back to the local government, do they agree with the steps taken by Binance?

Binance have been accused by most government of poor money laundering check. The firm is just trying to clear it's name by showing that it can clampdown on illegal transactions.

Yes its actions might make them gain more trust, but its too harsh. They would have informed the account users about their suspicions, warned them of the consequences , advice them to deregister from the platform before freezing.

If this process was not followed, then everyone's account should be unfrozen and those found guilty of fraud (after thorough investigation) should be advised to move their funds and bared from the platform.

My stand is because you can't enforce a new rule without notifying your clients.

In order to comply with local Nigerian law, it seems binance is no more allowing people from Nigeria to trade with them. But, freezing out funds leads me to think differently because for the reason of government law, an exchange should give users time to withdraw funds by announcing about termination of services well in advance. Simply freezing of funds should be only for the case of breach of terms and services of exchange. So, binance may take further action regarding this as probably they may temporarily froze funds to get time to comply their services with law.

Nigeria is far ahead in terms of crypto use binance is not given to minors or validators who are responsible for processing transactions and securing the associated blockchain network. But whether binance action can revive the nigerian community will depend on the government of their country if it becomes legal you select the network that is compatible with the withdrawal address there will be no barriers to raising funds.

Restrictions of any kind can definitely reduce the restricted actions, but will definitely not completely eradicate them. SO there is always merit in choosing to protect what can be protected and raise the overall security of your business and its customers. However, as I stated numerous times on this forum, crypto is not the solution to a deeper economic problem, nor can one company alone shift a mindset of a certain country. The change needs to be systematic, it needs to come from within the society and it needs to be widespread to all parts of its economy to truly work.

With the amount of control binance is getting I am pretty sure that not users but Binance would benefit a lot from this matter. Obviously if they have taken the big step like freezing the account then there has to be control issues. For example, this seems like forceful KYC completion and thus user has no options but to showcase their crypto earnings to the government. I think one way other this is good for government since as far as i know Nigeria is not that rich country and have no plans of developing in the near future. Most of them are so busy in under education and fleeing out of the country for the hunt of jobs and post education.

So this has complete relation with government trying to take as much info as they could from binance and have taxes levied for the state purpose.

If you don't have any proof to back up your claim, I'll assume it's a big fat lie.
No exchange would want to promote fraud, and no exchange would want to be fined and punished if they boycott her host community. Most exchanges, particularly Binance, ensure that they obey all country requirements, which is why they stop NGN fiat deposits and withdrawals from their exchange. No exchange would condone or enable fraud, period.

Otherwise, is there any proof to your claim? :P
I don't think any proof is needed, as this is opinion. By the way, have you read this entire thread? What do you think caused those accounts to be frozen? Did Binance suddenly have the initiative to do it without any regulatory pressure they had to comply with? Do you think this action will not have a negative impact, especially if the accounts are not proven to have violations?

They create user policies in such a way and execute violators to fulfill regulatory demands. If they are not regulated, they will let you do business however you want using their platform because they are not responsible for anything that happens afterwards.

It's no secret that all businesses have risk, and all crypto players also hold to the principle that their risk is greater.

It's a tough experience for traders that locked their funds on Binance. The Nigeria government banned cryptocurrency to Fiat transaction. That is linking your bank account to any cryptocurrency exchange or wallet and withraw directly to your bank account. And they is no other possible means of banning the peer to peer kind of trading in Nigeria.

The Nigerian government make money from bureucrats by selling dollars at a higher rate to them through the central bank of Nigeria. So the average Nigerian buy dollar at a very high rate, therefore the cryptocurrency method of getting dollar and changing it to Nigerian currency has made alot of Nigerians to forget the bureau de changers and trade peer to peer since they see more profits because they sell the Bitcoin at a good rate.

I have noticed that the government don't prefer it when citizens have a way out to getting things like dollars and they cannot regulate it. Therefore, the freezing of some Nigerians account on Binance could be one of the tricks the government want to integrate to help regulate a good number of Nigerian cryptocurrency traders by rending some people to go back to the local bureau the changers to boost the dollar market in Nigeria.

Fraudulent activities happen everywhere and it's not a strong reason to freeze people's account without any warning. I think their Government concealed their intentions such that Binance will see a reason to accept the offer of freezing some Nigerian accounts.

Why Binance has restricted some Nigerian accounts (https://qz.com/africa/2119503/why-binance-has-restricted-some-nigerian-accounts)

Binance have restricted specific number of personal accounts upon the request of international law enforcement. According to the information from the news article 281 personal accounts have been restricted to prevent fraud and ensure the platform's security. In specific CEO Binance added

“User security remains our top priority,” he said. “We love and are devoted to our Nigerian community, but we must ensure that our users are safe.”

Some #tags connected with Binance have been trending in twitter. Further it is said 79 cases have been resolved and are working on it. People will regain access as the team is working on speed resolution on those accounts.

When you say better results do you mean for Nigerian or for Binance? From the looks of things Nigerians are the ones most affected here and not Binance. I did a thread on this topic here; Binance & Nigerian; Most recent development on frozen funds without prior notice (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5383607.0) the affected accounts are in their hundreds, you can't tell me all those are associated with what ever investigation they're doing. Why punish innocent individuals that make a living from your platform just because of some bad eggs. Among the hundreds, there would be traders, investors etc that would have lost heavily due to the market correction.

Nigerians rely on Binance for peer2peer transaction, there are so many noobs coming into the industry to escape the hardship in the country, it'll be hard to keep up even if you're trying to enlightened them on what to do or not to do in regards to trusting centralized exchange with their funds. This centralized service does the most outreach in teaching about Bitcoin so unconsciously they're to use this platforms. I'm still not in support of this decision by Binance but I don't blame them though, they have their terms and have to complie with the government but they should know, they have lost many trust of Nigerians.

But it can be very disappointing if the price of the coins that was seized by binance dropped significantly, it can also increase though, but if it drops, it will be a bad experience for Nigerians that are not fraudsters but their coins were seized or their accounts were freezed.

Some people are actually fraudsters, if such people are caught, it will be good, they were unable to successfully fraud but this does not mean fraudsters are not using custodial exchanges successfully even in a way the custodial exchanges will never know anything about it as it is not directly connected.

It is good to use noncustodial ways instead of not having total control, I do not mean fraudsters but people that are innocent and their coins are seized.

According to Binance, the action is in line with global anti-laundering law and not only peculiar to Nigerian users alone. Binance is a centralized exchange which makes it regulatory compliance so any user on binance knows that. before going ahead to open an account and going through the KYC process on the exchange you have to be prepared to take whatever comes from it to be on a safer side don't store large amounts on an exchange.

This happens all the time with many exchanges. Not "seized" but the exchanges gets frozen, I have seen plenty of exchanges never handling the load correctly and whenever there are some big movements up or down they end up crashing and that causes websites to go down for a while until it can get back.

This means people who have funds there would have to watch the market go up or down while not being able to use their funds to buy or sell. This is just way too common and people just learned to ignore it after a while, can't say that it was something that we should ignore but it is Binance we are talking about and I am sure alternatives wouldn't be all that much better.

Binance had made out such decisions because it was just a response from Nigerias Central Bank.
You could read up more on this link. https://thepaypers.com/cryptocurrencies/binance-suspends-nigeria-deposits-after-central-bank-ban--1247108

So far, the CBN has not provided an official reason for the sudden order that is sending panic through social media.
Source: Link above.

So this one isnt Binance own action.

There is difference between fact and truth.
When you said binance are fueling illicit activities, your opinion doesn't just wake up your mind and say something like that, you should have read it somewhere before your opinion may count on a statement. I don't trust centralized exchange after reading so many count charges on Tether manipulation but your statement doesn't justify binance.

I read about those freeze accounts and I was damn Happy about that, they were rusting p2p section for other legitimate traders and hustlers.

I do not know if I understand it correctly but at first read, that sounds racist. They restrict Nigerian users to protect their community but which community? Was it binance or Nigerian? It seems they aren't different to others that thinks Nigerian people are fraudsters and now you ask if this actions can yield better result? lol, to binance maybe but to the other party no.

If there's anyone that they are protecting, that is their selves and the other countries that they like but it shouldn't be like this, discriminating must be stop now. Cryptos are something that can make the lives of people or their economy improve and all have the rights to use it. Cryptos aren't controlled by someone else.

There is a difference in the meaning of the words "fueling" and "don't care". Not caring doesn't mean it will be the cause if it's in the other party's control (authority). From the start, actually none of your opinions contradict mine.
Your opinion is basically "binance is trying to comply with regulations". Then where is your disagreement with me?

---

A person can have an opinion instantly by reading and drawing conclusions from the situation or case being read. That is the result of authentic thinking (the true meaning of opinion). If you're asking where I generate thoughts, I've read this thread and you missed these parts,
This freeze is a regulatory initiative, not binance. So what's your opinion if regulation isn't involved?

---

I'll tell you again, centralized exchanges will seize money for only 2 things:
Disadvantaging them such as attacking their security systems (especially centralized wallets), cheating in reward programs.
Regulatory orders. Even if your account is hacked, your case will not be processed if you don't attach a police letter.

If you have reasons other than the above that prompted Binance to freeze your account, please show me a case in point.

Most of the time people will choose comfort over security and privacy and even in this market that is the way it works, I can understand that those that actively trade will leave their coins on the exchange as there is not really any other option for them, but those that do not do so and make the occasional trade do not have any justification.

Most of the time they do this out of convenience but also because they do not want to spend some of their bitcoin on the fees to move it in and out of the exchange, and in their attempt to save themselves some money they exposed themselves and lost everything.

Binance is one the top leading crypto exchanges in the whole world, they're well known in providing selfless service delivery. In a situation where by they found some unsecured transactions, they will definitely suspend all the suspected accounts, because people use any opportunity to cheat, so if Binance found out this they will definitely restrict all suspicious people and do further research. I think they are capable of protecting Nigerian Binance users from froud.

I think of the same that Binance is being responsible for their actions. If they have to suspend a specific user's bases geographically, they have a reason for doing it.
Well, it's not that they're going to suspend those accounts all of the time. After finding out a solution for the security and protection of their users there, they'll eventually get back to you with a better ruling and protection.

Well they need to have explanation if there are counter action on this incident since if they don't have anything word to say after a heavy restriction for sure there imagine might stain for some bad things knowing that people always ask for explanation and will get angry for unexplained condition unto them. Binance has capability on those things since they are the rule creator and can implement this anytime.