CEX's and the Government

Recently I received an email from Kucoin. One of the many centralized exchanges I am forced to use cause of the restrictions my country has tried to impose on the crypto community. It was a pretty long stack of words, but the main premise is that the government has imposed a tax on all transactions that will take place on their platform. So from now on, in addition to the fees they usually take, another 7.5% of the fees will be taken from your balance as tax. I am not exactly sure how the government were able to push them to the wall (if they did that) and get them to agree, but it is just absurd. Especially because a while ago they put up laws to deter us from using crypto, they blocked (and are still blocking) bank accounts if they are able to find proof that the account is involved in crypto. They also made crypto seem like the devil to the older generation, by continuously speaking ill of it on the news and spreading propaganda about how it is the reason for the devaluation of our national currency (rather than actually working to make the naira more valuable).

Let me not even get started on the whole issue with Binance because I can't seem to understand what exactly it is that they were fighting for, all I know is that they detained some officials and accused them of money laundering, and then I am hearing that the officials escaped, the whole situation was a shitshow and Binance eventually took off P2p for the NGN which is one of the things that they wanted. Somehow they also got OKX (another popular exchange over here) to delist the NGN from P2P. What they don't realize is that they can't stop crypto simply by stopping P2P on a couple of exchanges.

What this email has made me realize is that the government doesn't really give a shit about crypto or whether or not it is harmful to the national currency, the only thing they care about is how they can have a hand in it. During the whole crypto smear campaign that they did at the start of the year, I remember seeing a video of one of the officials talking about how the volume of money going both ways was in the billions and how emphatic he was on that. The way he spoke it was obvious that the reason they're pressed is because that is a lot of money that they can't control, can't tax and they want to find a way to get their hands on it. They have realized that since a lot of people use centralized exchanges to easily get funds in and out of the space, they're trying to impose rules on these exchanges so they can get their own share of the pie. I have already decided I'll avoid Kucoin, but I'm sure very soon they'll come for some of the other exchanges we are using.

Another thing that strengthens my resolve on the fact that they simply want a piece of a pie is remembering that a few years back they created a digital currency called the e-naira. The e-naira flopped so hard, no one talks about it, and It is as though it never existed. I also saw a tweet that there are rumours of them working on a new native blockchain called Nigerium, lol. The name alone screams dead on arrival. Ban crypto and then create a blockchain, that'll be so ironic if it happens. Looking forward to seeing how things unfold in months and years to come. But one thing is sure, we will persevere.

THANKS FOR READING

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