BitcoinBTC and crypto prices have soared this year, pushed higher by expectations of major changes in 2024.
The bitcoin price has come within touching distance of $45,000 per bitcoin in recent weeks—boosting other major cryptocurrencies such as ethereum, XRPXRP and solana— as hype around a potential bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), sparked by Wall Street giant BlackRockBLK, reaches a fever pitch (with a big update revealed this week).
Now, as China was revealed to have quietly flipped on crypto, Nigeria, the country with the highest rate of bitcoin and adoption after India, has suddenly lifted restrictions on banks handling crypto transactions.
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“Current trends globally have shown that there is a need to regulate the activities of virtual assets service providers (VASPs), which include cryptocurrencies and crypto assets,” the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) wrote to the country’s banks, according to local reports, reversing a 2021 ban that prevented commercial banks from offering services to crypto exchanges in the country.
However, banks are still prohibited from holding, trading, or conducting transactions in cryptocurrency using their own accounts.
“This is big news,” Jeremy Allaire, the chief executive of stablecoin company Circle, posted to X.
Despite the 2021 bitcoin and crypto exchange bank ban, crypto use has risen sharply in Nigeria, putting the country just behind India as the world’s biggest adopter of the technology.
Nigeria’s volume of crypto transactions grew 9% year-over-year to $56.7 billion between July 2022 and June 2023, according to a September report by blockchain sleuths at Chainalysis.
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Interest in bitcoin and crypto in Nigeria has exploded as the country, Africa’s largest economy, wrestles with a rapidly collapsing currency and soaring inflation.
“People are constantly looking for opportunities to hedge against the devaluation of the naira and the persistent economic decline since Covid,” Moyo Sodipo, co-founder of Nigeria-based cryptocurrency exchange Busha, told Reuters.
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