Nigeria’s crackdown on Binance has raised concerns over the future of cryptocurrency in the country.
The concerns follow a series of government moves targeted at the crypto platform over the last two weeks. Last week, Nigeria asked its telecommunications firms to restrict access to the websites of crypto firms.
Later, it asked Binance and others to disable USDT trades in naira. Currently, the Binance Peer-To-Peer (P2P) market is unavailable to Nigerians. On Wednesday, news broke that the two of the firm’s executives had been detained.
The two executives had flown to Nigeria following the country’s recent restriction on several cryptocurrency trading websites, but the office of the country’s national security adviser detained them and seized their passports.
Earlier on Tuesday, Olayemi Cardoso, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), revealed that $26 billion flowed through Binance Nigeria in one year from sources and users the apex bank could not identify.
He confirmed an ongoing collaboration by different agencies, including the Police, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), to clamp down on economic saboteurs.
“Suffice to say that we are determined to do everything it takes to ensure that we take charge of our market and not allow others to manipulate it… We will not accept it and will do everything possible to prevent any infraction,” he declared.
Cardoso’s statement and the country’s actions have been met with mixed reactions, with trade volumes falling as apprehension gripped the crypto industry. One industry expert said anonymously: “We don’t know if the authorities are after just Binance or the industry. They have not said anything yet.”
Industry players who spoke to BusinessDay said they are having to relive the nightmare of 2021, when the country first banned crypto transactions.
“People are not trading as they used to. Most platforms have also disabled the ability to trade naira and USDT. It is affecting the whole industry just like it did in 2021. We want to know if the government is anti-Binance or anti-crypto. Because they have not said so. Binance P2P is not working. Now they are showing us ‘pepper’,” a crypto trader who only identified himself as Korede said.