Despite being a democratic nation, Nigeria seems to have a lot in common with China, a communist run country these days.
The Nigerian regime recently suspended Twitter’s operations in the country which China blocked since June 2009. The regime went as far as approaching China to inquire about building a firewall due to its inability to fully enforce the ban.
Earlier this year, the regime via the CBN in response to young Nigerians using cryptocurrency especially Bitcoin to power protests in the country, ordered banks and other financial institutions to stop support for cryptocurrency. Since then, the apex bank has been back and forth about being open to cryptocurrency and launching a digital currency. Nigeria beat China to this.
Today, China just like Nigeria, has told banks and payment platforms to stop supporting cryptocurrency transactions. This follows an order on Friday to shut down Bitcoin mining operations in Sichuan province.
The price of Bitcoin crashed by more than 10% on Monday but stabilised in Asian trading on Tuesday. The value of the cryptocurrency has fallen by around 50% since hitting a record high above $63,000 in April.
China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), said it had recently summoned several major banks and payments companies to call on them to take tougher action over the trading of cryptocurrencies.
Banks were told to not provide products or services such as trading, clearing, and settlement for cryptocurrency transactions, the PBOC said in a statement.
China’s third-largest lender by assets, the Agricultural Bank of China, said it was following the PBOC’s guidance and would conduct due diligence on clients to root out illegal activities involving cryptocurrency mining and transactions. China’s Postal Savings Bank also said it would not facilitate any cryptocurrency transactions.
Chinese mobile and online payments platform Alipay, which is owned by financial technology giant Ant Group, said it would set up a monitoring system to detect illegal cryptocurrency transactions.
