Bitcoin Forum

The recent report by  Bloomberg  (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-27/crypto-trades-contribute-to-naira-s-dive-in-unauthorized-market) that Nigerians accumulating cryptocurrencies to shield assets against a weakening naira have contributed to a slump in the fiat currency to a record low in the unauthorized market got my attention. The news reminded me of the blame game of the government of my country. My government is always quick to blame cryptocurrencies for the fall of our currency. But they fail to understand that people prefer Bitcoin because they have lost confidence in the stability of our currency. Converting our currency to Bitcoin is the effect of the fall in the value of our currency and not the cause of it. There are many factors that have led to the fall of our currency and cryptocurrency is not at the top of the list.

In February 23, 2021, my country’s Central Bank  (https://www.channelstv.com/2021/02/23/cryptocurrency-ban-cbn-governor-godwin-emefiele-honours-senates invitation/#:~:text=The%20CBN%20Governor%2C%20Godwin%20Emefiele,cryptocurrency%20on%20the%20nation's%20economy)Chief appeared before the parliament to defend the bank’s directive to all commercial banks which forbids them to use, hold, trade or transact in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The apex bank claimed that these currencies are used for many illegal activities including fraud/ money laundering, ransom collection by kidnappers, terrorism financing and purchase of small arms and light weapons, and tax evasion. He also went further to state that dealings using cryptocurrencies threaten the soundness of our countries’ financial institutions which might lead to the depreciation in value of our national currency. From the above, the Central Bank Chief informed the Parliament that banning Bitcoin and other crypto currencies would lead to the decrease of
1.   Fraud and money laundering
2.   terrorism financing/ ransom collection by kidnappers
3.   tax evasion and
4.   depreciation of national currency value.
I might not be able to defend or talk much about the third point because he might be correct but the other three challenges he outlined that the restrictions of Bitcoin operations would reduce are far from the truth.

Fraud and money laundering: Immediately after the ban, it was reported that four deposit money banks in my country lost a total of N1.77bn to fraudulent activities involving the banks’ employees  (https://punchng.com/four-banks-lost-n1-77bn-to-fraud-in-2021-says-report/#:~:text=Four%20Nigerian%20deposit%20money%20banks,financial%20statements%20of%20the%20banks) and consumers in 2021. The bank incurred due to fraudulent activities rose by N337.5m from N174.40m recorded in 2020. And none of these fraud cases was crypto related; all of them were carried out through physical or online fiat transactions. In fact the main master-minders of fraud and money laundering in my country are government officials. Several cases of fraud or money laundering activities of government officials have been widely reported. But on Monday, May 16, 2022, the country’s anti-corruption agency arrested the serving Accountant General  (https://www.vanguardngr.com/2022/05/just-in-efcc-detains-nigerias-accountant-general-over-alleged-n80b-fraud/) of the Federation (who was meant to be the main anti-fraud crusader), in connection with diversion of funds and money laundering activities to the tune of $136,752,137. The AGF had raked off the funds through bogus consultancies and other illegal activities using proxies, family members and close associates. And the funds were laundered through real estate investments in different parts of the country. Yet the government would want to blame young Bitcoiners for the increase of fraud and money laundering.

Terrorism financing and ransom payments: Just recently the government of my country criminalized payment of ransom to kidnappers and bandits. Anyone that is convicted of ransom payment would be sentenced to 15years imprisonment. But the  government  (https://punchng.com/govt-officials-pay-abductors-secretly-ransom-bill-hypocritical-sokapu/) has been accused of hypocrisy; people argue that top government officials secretly paid ransom to secure the release of their loved ones while other victims from poor families were left at the mercy of their abductors. An example is the recent kidnapping of over 61 train passengers and $170,000 was paid secretly for the CEO of the Bank of Agriculture. A report (https://nairametrics.com/2022/08/13/insecurity-n6-5-billion-demanded-in-kidnapping-ransoms-in-nigeria-since-july-2021-sbm/) stated that based on what could be verified, between July 2021 (after the ban on Bitcoin transactions) and June 2022, no fewer than 3,420 people were abducted across my country, an increase of more than 100%. In the ensuing period, $9,806,306.31 was demanded in exchange for the release of captives while a fraction of that sum ($1,126,126.13) was paid as ransom. And most of these funds are paid in cash. An example (https://saharareporters.com/2022/07/23/nigerian-government-paid-us-n60million-ransom-free-zamfara-schoolgirls-we-spent-it) is the testimony of one of the notorious bandits’ leaders who carried out the abduction of nearly 300 schoolgirls at the Government Girls Secondary School in Jangebe town in Zamfara State in February 2021 who revealed that the Nigerian government coughed up approximately $102,561 cash before they (the bandits) freed the girls.
The bandits’ leader in an interview with BBC Africa Eye, when asked what they did with the money, simply stated that they used the money to acquire more rifles and other deadly weapons for subsequent operations (Purchase of small arms and light weapons).

Depreciation of national currency value: One of the cardinal reasons for the current drastic  depreciation  (https://dailytrust.com/ahead-of-apc-pdp-primaries-naira-crashes-further-as-aspirants-mop-up-dollars) of our national currency is because of the primaries of the two leading political parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Aspirants mopped up dollars across the country that would be used to buy votes from delegates and other critical stakeholders instead of carrying big bags. The  Vanguard  (https://www.vanguardngr.com/2022/06/pdp-presidential-convention-did-governors-shortchange-delegates-in-the-dollar-bazaar/)gathered that a number of delegates smiled home with amounts ranging from $10,000 to $40,000 each and total of 7,800 delegates will participate in the primary of the APC and 3,700 will determine the flag bearer of the PDP. Even when several professional bodies warned that this dollar mop-up would cripple the value of our currency the country’s apex bank was still making the dollars available to their “political allies. But recently the government blamed Bitcoin for the fall of our currency and never mentioned that our currency has been depreciating since April because of the huge pressure on the naira because politicians share dollars, especially to delegates. According to available records, Nigerians spend between $1.2 billion and $1.6 billion on  medical  (https://fmic.gov.ng/nigeria-set-to-become-destination-for-medical-tourism-reverse-brain-drain-minister/) and $2.9 billion annually on education (https://independent.ng/nigerias-39-66-billion-foreign-education-medical-tourism-cost/), a development described by experts as a huge drain on the country’s foreign reserves. A government that cannot fixed the health and educational system so as to limit the pressure on the country's currency is always blaming Bitcoin.
 
It might be true that Bitcoin can be misused or abused by some individuals or organization which might affect the economy, but portraying Bitcoin  as one of the major cause of the country’s economic woes is untrue.
  

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I'm already tired to discuss about those stuffs since that's just an excuses of how someone completely don't like Bitcoin without any research.

Fraud, money laundering and terrorism are similar, Bitcoin can be used to hide it. But before Bitcoin exist fraud, money laundering, and terrorism are still there with the use of fiat money. Question: If fiat money can be used to those stuffs, why all people trust and still use fiat until now?

Tax evasion is depends on each person, even they're not using Bitcoin, they can evade tax by following the whole procedure in order to not pay income tax. They're using the advantages of country without income tax.

Inflation is because of printing money, not Bitcoin. That's a dumb analogy from your government.

Contrast situation and different with my government view about bitcoin and other altcoin transaction, still not use as legal currency for bitcoin and altcoin in my country. All global exchange market have been banned like Binance, Huobi and  Bitmart were can't open yet without use VPN.B But most funny what happen when Bitcoin and altcoin transaction need to pay tax, all trader or investor using local exchange get deducted and have to pay with tax few percent when transaction buy or sell, what ever kind with your order and no matter about cut loss or taking profit each transaction you need to pay tax. I most dislike what did by my government because they have been blame with banned all global exchange market but keep take tax with cryptocurrency transaction.

I read those decided they were things a corrupted government brings/makes worse. Corruption begins to authorise nepetistic ways to make money through previously illegal activity by guaranteeing people will get away with things if they're caught or giving them a preset fine when they're caught - or giving groups you know an exemption so they'll be inclined to protect you.

Did bitcoin come first or did these social evils come first? Before bitcoin didn't exist, criminals used fiat so was the government blame with fiat before? We have never heard of that.

It is probably the most brazen thing I have ever heard, how bitcoin could devalue the currency of a nation. They are exaggerating bitcoin or they have no one left to blame their mismanagement for inflation and now they are looking for someone to take responsibility for their stupid mistakes. Ridiculous.

Well, that's pretty typical. Certain governments make a disastrous management and to blame for their ills they always look for an external enemy.

In this case, blaming Bitcoin for things like inflation, which has been historically high in the country (https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NGA/nigeria/inflation-rate-cpi), is laughable.

The bad thing is that this type of attitude on the part of governments does not solve anything, but tends to make things worse, as in Argentina.

Good luck to those of you who live there.

Bitcoin is such a good scapegoat that it's making me yawn whenever the government puts the blame on bitcoin or cryptocurrency for their failures to maintain and improve the economy, it's kind of funny to imagine how they're doing it in the drawing board, what stuff should they blame that doesn't involve what they're doing that's really causing the problem. I hope people are smart enough to doubt that bitcoin is the cause of economic failures.

Governments & Central Banks are never going to willingly allow bitcoin to thrive & become a worldwide medium of exchange. They’ll fight until they’re blue in the face but sadly for them, their resistance is futile & bitcoin is going to the moon. Nobody or nothing can stop honeybadger.

This is a case of misplacement of priorities. There are bigger fish to fry in Nigeria and Bitcoin is the least of it. Bitcoin didn't cause fraud and money laundering, terrorism financing, tax evasion, and depreciation of the country's currency. Instead government and her terrible policies did. As as far a the 90's a certain head of state embezzled billions of dollars from Nigeria and stashed in several countries all over the world. Did bitcoin cause this? There's also the news of the of a former accountant general of the federation being arraigned in court for overN109.4 billion fraud. (https://www.vanguardngr.com/2022/07/n109bn-scam-efcc-to-arraign-former-accountant-general-ahmed-idris-others/) Is bitcoin responsible for this? I hope the citizenry get it right in the next upcoming elections.

Actually, it's not that ridiculous if Nigerians would be indeed buying cryptocurrencies at a record level, which is not really happening, $2 million in trades a day is peanuts.

But now, about depreciation, yes it can happen because Bitcoin is a global commodity, so Nigerians buying bitcoins are offering their Naira for sale, but the rest of the world from which Nigerians are acquiring BTC are obviously not wanting those and so all that gets exchanged into a currency with a demand, that being the USD. So you have a shitload of Naira that nobody wants to get exchanged and so driving the exchange rate down. Nothing really ridiculous or out of this world, this is how economies like Venezuela and Iran are crashing down because nobody wants their currencies but everyone in the country wants $, the same happend with the Weimar Republic in 1923 when they tried to buy foreign currency with printed money but ended up with nobody wanting to exchange that for their useless paper notes.

But again, Nigerians are not buying 1 billion worth of crypto from other countries a week to have any kind of effect on the economy.

That's true, all their attempts were just on a wasted efforts, the more the attack the wider the adoption, government cease to realize the basic idea behind the rush on bitcoin by it citizens it should be hold responsible of, we are in a world whereby what we want isn't offered by our instituted authorities, despite that, they aslo fail to realise and respect our collective andindividual decision in handling our finances, our employees (government) now turns in opposite direction on us without having regards on our decisions.

Yes Bitcoin can be abused, and so can absolutely every other thing be abused as well, like printing excessive fiat currencies for example and creating a high level of inflation. The only 'abuse' that is worthy of being highlighted in Nigeria is the government's gross and constant abuse of power and poor policies, that is exactly what is to blame for some of the economic crisis and other whatnots that's affecting the country, her econony and currency. The Nigerian government is famous for following the bandwagon, they know in their case Bitcoin isn't the cause of anything negative in the country, but since there is somewhat of a worldwide effort by governments the world over to taint the image of Bitcoin, thus they want to support that movement.

As a matter of fact, we can even go ahead to call the government of Nigeria irresponsible reason being that it shows a high level of irresponsibility and an irresponsible behavior to shift blame when the matured thing to do is to be a ''Man'' and own up to your shortcomings.

Since the Nigerian government went ahead to put policies against cryptocurrencies, these reasons that the central bank claimed would reduce has gone the opposite direction, there is still high fraud and money laundering cases, kidnapping is on the increase, and our national currency the naira has even fallen more below what it used to be and is loosing value in the international market. So it is clear that their excuse is invalid and bitcoin is not the reason for their failure. After the next general elections in Nigeria, we hope that these irresponsible set will be replaced by better individuals.

Can I say that despite their opposition to bitcoin but actually they are grateful? As far as I have read a lot of negative opinions about Nigeria, the corrupt government can actually shelter and only hit bitcoin as the main suspect in the decline of a country.
Abusing power is definitely more cruel than just abusing currency entities because it affects everyone under his leadership.

You are right my friend, nobody did ever blame Fiat for the criminal activities done back in the days. This is actually a sign of a weak government which has absolutely nothing to offer, because Nigeria is a country who praises a politicians  for stealing millions of dollars and yet punishing a poor man for taking a dollar. So I am very happy for the peer2peer system which enable us buy and sell our coins anonymously

That makes most of the government these days blame their failures onto bitcoin because they see it as a threat to their own currency, when in fact bitcoin is here to serve more convenience to the people, and not literally to compete with fiat. And when we say government failure, its because they always look into their personal greed and find satisfaction, while leaving the citizens suffer from the consequences of their actions. 

Unfortunately in many countries politicians spend their whole lives just trying to make it to the next election and will latch on to any small ideas if they think it will make them popular with a wide enough percentage of the population to help. The population of Nigeria are looking all over for people to blame for the unrest and poor state of the economy, in reality it might be held back by religion in certain circumstances - like we see the lawless state in the Northern regions. However it's much easier to target an innate object like a currency than actually take action against charismatic opposition figures who might be a challenge. Like drugs in America, if they stopped waging "war" and treated it in the proper way it would take much less energy and effort to defeat.

What would you expect? They are always like that on which if ever they do make out some failure then they are really a fan on pointing out fingers into something and would be blamed of.

They are always trying to make theirselves clean looking or out of those issues without even knowing that citizens on their vicinity does really know their propaganda on the first place.

We do know on which or whose one to be blame when failures do happen.Now that they are seeing that Bitcoin cant be controlled nor cant be traced up then
some of them will really just emphasizing its cons which is bullshit.

actually this is the reason that is often published by the government about their negative value with bitcoin.and in fact they are happy with the high tax revenue from bitcoin and crypto transactions imposed by the government, and assumptions like that are just an opinion to increase the popularity of a company. institutions for political purposes in my personal opinion, while the points above are corrupt and naughty rich people, will look for loopholes for it not only in bitcoin in general in any valuable asset

It is not only the government in your country, it is the government all over the world. The government blames bitcoin for all her crimes. The corrupt and wicked politicians are the masterminders of fraud and money laundering and they blame it on Bitcoin, as if there was no fraud or money laundering before bitcoin was invented.

There is no terrorism that lasts for a year and more that the government doesn't know about. Infact the government of some countries are terror to their citizens. Before bitcoin, terror has been financed successfully.

In as much as bitcoin has it limitations, it's high time government stopped tagging bitcoin with all the negativities and begin to say how bitcoin lifted people from poverty and financial insecurity.

Blaming is not a new issue especially if they don't really know about Bitcoin and much more about its nature. Perhaps, they are wrong because it was not the fault of Bitcoin as it does nothing with your country but this blame must send to your government which is undoubtedly accountable for this. They are the ones who manage this investment and if they fail to negotiate the price and become panic, losses will be their ends.
They can't just simply throw their blames on crypto, they need to question themselves first.

This is really unfair for bitcoin as bitcoin does not exist to make other currency fall. That’s an absurd thinking. The value of country’s currency drops because people today do not find it useful  anymore especially that inflation continues to surge high. Most likely, they find bitcoin more interesting and aside from the fact that you can have your full control on it, it’s also a good outlet not to be highly affected with the current inflation.

ignorance is usually the cause of this misleading perception towards bitcoin. but for crypto users who know the true nature of bitcoin, they know that bitcoin should not be blamed. but a lot are still not well-informed in this market, hence, they are believing what their government is telling them. educate the people and the misconception will gone.

Indeed. Those are the common reasons for the government to judge the negativity on Bitcoin or crypto as a whole. But the funny thing is that they enjoy the high taxes from crypto and Bitcoin. Sure, what the government do is to grab the taxes from crypto and bitcoin as much as possible. Blaming and judging the negativity of Bitcoin/crypto is just a trick from the government to rob money from bitcoin/crypto users.

Yep, they did it for political purposes.
In reality, Bitcoin or crypto never leads people to corruption. It is just bad behavior from some people in government institutions, or it is caused by a poor system used by the government. So, actually, it is nothing to do with Bitcoin/crypto.

I get annoyed whenever I see government giving reasons like this, do they think we don't know what we are doing, I know they are not in support of cryptocurrency because it won't favor them, but I think if they are trying to paint bitcoin black they should look for valid reason and not all this cheap reasons they are giving. I always think maybe fiat currency is not always used for those illegal activities, even before bitcoin was created, all those illegal activities where don and they make use of fiat currency, so why making people think that cryptocurrency is used for illegal activities and fiat is a not used for all of those activities, I think they should come up with other reasons and those once are not valid, because all those illegal activities fiat currency is also used for it.

This might be indicative of (1) how your government failed in building a robust economy, (2) how it failed to trace where it went wrong, (3) how it failed in crafting and implementing relevant policies, and (4) how it it failed in appreciating Bitcoin.

Finger pointing is normally an indication of incompetence and irresponsibility. And making Bitcoin as a sort of a scapegoat won't actually help them. If at all, it will only make the situation worse. If they cannot admit and correct where they went wrong, the problem remains unsolved and Bitcoin would remain as a better alternative. People would further embrace Bitcoin.

As far as I am concerned, they know what they're talking about. They know everything about bitcoin, but they are unable to come up with a better reason to blame it on bitcoin and crypto.

It is a fact that these evils still occur without Bitcoin, and those who are responsible for managing the country cannot completely solve this problem. Blame is always the perfect way for governments to redirect public opinion.

Trough your government country still ability used bitcoin as investment assets for trading or investing and you can access to all exchange market I don't think have to worry about your government still blame with bitcoin. I think this important key with bitcoin still as legal currency transaction for trading and investing looks better than your government blame and banned bitcoin as investment assets. Slowly when bitcoin have been popular in your country I think have change view by government and they will allow bitcoin as legal currency transaction later. Just need time and how keep build with positive impact from bitcoin as worth investment assets and when have many people get much profit from bitcoin, actually your government will change negative become positive view about bitcoin.

That's not just about your country and that's not only about bitcoin, most of the governments in the world always blame everyone and everything for their mistakes otherwise they have to accept their mistakes and say sorry for them, even in my country there is the same situation, and the million dollar question to ask from these governments is what about the time before bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, what the reason for their failures and they have nothing to say. they blame and attack to bitcoin and bitcoiners because they are scared of it.

hes right....
Isn't tax avoidance, fraud, money laundering and other reasons, still exist and are carried out by corruptors, rogue officials and companies, before bitcoin appeared and were used in a country why after bitcoin appeared they cornered bitcoin as a scapegoat, I think they are looking for the reason for their inability to eradicate corruption, tax, and terrorist problems, so publishing the issue of bitcoin as one of the causes

Everything could really be blamed if they wanted to and whatever they've been able to look upon on which they would really make themselves to look clean and out from issues and other non pleasant things which

it would really be a common behavior for them to have.Blaming out something even its their mistakes and those are just common alibis to be thrown out to bitcoin without even realizing that these issues

had been long time existing on this world and they are just trying out to make it look bad into those people who dont have full knowledge about bitcoin and this is really just
not that appealing to look at because they are being mislead out of those words.

You know they have all the right to do that in order to protect their citizens from fraud and scams since it has been reported that some people are using it as a getaway for those reasons. We can't blame them for that though this type of reasons/reaction usually bring negative effect of the cryptocurrency since those bad guys are using it not for good. Although, fiat had this kind of problem too that's why they should be fair with their decision too but I guess the government doesn't have time to do their research or they just want to protect their ideas.

True, the thing is that bitcoin is really on the forefront of every country right now, it's in the discussions and we can see that even world financial governing bodies has something to say with it.

But then again, we have heard this excuses on why they would ban bitcoin for good. And the only one that is going to hurt is the people of those countries who find bitcoin very advantageous like giving them financial freedom. And then suddenly their government will shut it down and put the blame on it because of their incompetency and ineptness.

I can help you get a unique example of how bad the government's attitude is towards bitcoin.
Bitcoin is a medium that people can use to trade, pay and transact from wallet to wallet. Bitcoin can be abused, but that's not the concept it was created for. Governments should be able to blame much deadlier guns or bombs, but they always blame the owners or abuser rather than the media used. They shouldn't fail to understand that, so they don't just blame bitcoin for being abused by certain users.

In fact, what they do so far actually much worse. They deal with corruption, money laundering even before Bitcoin exists, crimes, nepotism, and other things that are negatively influencing the country. However, if they don't like Bitcoin, they will always hate and blame Bitcoin for whatever happened in the country. Spreading the negative sides of Bitcoin all over the ocuntry, make FUD and cosndier that Bitcoin is very dangerous. This is also spread on the media in whcih media can relaly infleunce citizen in the country very well. That is politic.
In fact, Bitcoin really save the peole life in the country,much better than only what thegovenrment can talk without any solution

this is always used as a reason for rejecting bitcoin in a country, tired of discussing this actually,
point 4 actually bitcoin has no effect at all with the value of the national currency, I don't know from which point of view the government can say that

When depraved criminal lunatics like politicians need to shift the blame for something that they themselves caused, its only natural for them to point the finger at anything which is popular and easily blame-able.

Smart people will aways be able to see through the politicians and bankers lies because they know the truth. And the truth is that Bitcoin is not something bad, or something which is corrupted. Bitcoin is the ultimate freedom.

If the people of your country only took payment in Bitcoin and refused to pay taxes, then your corrupt politicians would start panicking very fast. Of course they would try to force everyone to pay up by force. Like throwing people in jail or even shooting them.

Often, governments don't want to be blamed for what happens in their country. Instead they will make more defense. And the reason because of Bitcoin, this is a reason that makes less sense.
How can they make it seem like Bitcoin is the only thing that has the most impact on the country? Isn't it that many of its citizens are helped because of Bitcoin? Is it appropriate for the governments to act to spread FUD about Bitcoin without balancing the positive side?
And because of this, it is possible that more and more citizens have no respect for the government.

This may happen in Bitcoin and it also happens in fiat currency but the blockchain makes it easy to verify and track the individual that did it (if no privacy service is used just like how Bitfinex suspected hacker was tracked down ). This cant is achieved in fiat currency and that's the reason why a lot of political leaders can freely steal the nation's funds.

4 Problems that are always used as a benchmark for people who don't like bitcoin :D
We've heard about this a lot and I've even seen a few times people dislike bitcoin for reasons like this.
Fraud and money laundering, terrorism financing/ransom collection by kidnappers, tax evasion and depreciation of national currency value did they not think of anything other than this? because indeed from several years I have known bitcoin they only talk about this continuously even though they themselves already know some reasonable answers about problems like this.

I've spoken before about Bitcoin being the scapegoat for issues unrelated to crypto in general -- to reiterate the point: Cryptocurrency doesn't have much to do with terrorism. I'm sure the government can point to specific reports of terrorist groups using crypto to fund terror activity, but those incidents are scarce across the broader spectrum of terrorism. The Taliban currently control an entire country and its resources, for example. Iran, leading state sponsor of terrorism, are currently sharpening their nuclear arenol. Are we really expecting crypto to be the fiscal epicenter of terrorism because some people requested Bitcoin in ransom funds? Should we really lose sight of the bigger picture?

The government just needs to give a palatable excuse to the average citizen without technical knowledge of Bitcoin to justify its curtailment. You'll be shocked to find out how many liberties citizens will voluntarily give away in the name of personal safety.

Recently i read some article which is about top 5 countries which is more towards the future of technology and surprisingly Nigeria was on the list, i don't know about the reality but its a fact that Nigeria is growing faster but the government doesn't even care about the potential of their citizens do they never tried to make any changes which can bring more growth into the economy but wanted to still scratch whatever the people have, even they banned cryptocurrencies and exchanges launched their own CBDC but nothing worked in their way.

I think bitcoin can actually help solve a country's economic problems.
if the government blames bitcoin and cryptocurrencies for their failure in the country's economy it may only be to cover up the failure of the government and bitcoin is the vessel for that failure.
but they do not pay attention to the impact of this, it will only add to the economic collapse of their country.