By Francis Ogwo
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has suspended facilitation of payments for cryptocurrency deals and related digital assets by Deposit Money Banks (DMB)s, non-financial institutions, other financial institutions.
This was contained in a circular released by the apex bank on Friday and distributed to regulated financial firms.
In the release, the CBN warned and reminded local financial institutions against having any transactions in crypto or facilitating payments for crypto exchanges.
Further details in the release had the apex bank instructing the financial institutions to, with immediate effect, shut the accounts of such persons or entities transacting in or operating cryptocurrency exchanges while threatening stuff penalties on breach of warnings.
Experts have argued that the directive from CBN would deal a great blow on the international crypot chat especially with Nigeria’s rating in Bitcoin trading which it currently ranks as highest even as a recent release by Google revealed Nigeria as top on Bitcoin searches globally.
