I saw this news earlier today, and I was reading through it this morning. The figures, which are half a trillion dollars of speculation, might not be correct, but I see some sense in what he said, as I have also witnessed a lot of big trade being carried out before.
I know of someone whom I helped purchase bitcoin earlier this day, maybe around February. This person acquired all his USDT through some WhatsApp group, where all they dealt with was purely P2P trade, and no transaction less than $1000 was carried out there. I don't know how they were able to build such trust within themselves, but a lot of money is flowing through that group.
Also on Telegram, you can conduct P2P trades, which are worth millions of naira on a daily basis, with the help of an escrow that doesn't even charge a dam. From both parties, his work is just to secure trade between both parties, so a lot of trades are being carried out off the targeted exchanges.
The only thing that I believe will affect Nigerians is that if the government succeeds in bringing down all the major exchanges that support NGN/USDT pairs, both P2P and spot, there will be a lot of scams and manipulation on WhatsApp and other platform trade, especially for those who might not know their way around to trade on other Dex exchanges. Those telegram and WhatsApp vendors will now see themselves as gods, and as such, they can decide which rate they want to buy coins from and which rate they will not.
Omo no be small thing we go play if this thing actually come through especially for the aspect of scammers, even now wey some CEX still dey try their best to regulate transaction through P2P, people still dey find wey dem wan take scam person and this thing nearly happen to me today sef as the vendor dey claim to have actually sent payment and claimed that banks are not working because of some sort of shutdown but I no fear because say I never actually release coins but if na all these Whatsapp group Omo who knows watin fit play out .
