CBN and the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Commission
(NDIC) have set up a committee to study the trending digital currency, Bitcoin.
Alhaji Umaru Ibrahim, Managing Director
of the commission revealed this at the 2016 Workshop for Financial
Correspondents in Kaduna.
The theme of the workshop is “Economic Recession
and the Nigerians Banking Sector: Opportunities, Challenges and the way
Forward”.
He said “We will
look at its advantages and disadvantages, what it means for the payment system
and what it means for safety and security of customers.
“We will also look at what it means for money
laundering, anti-corruption, crime and measurement of money /near money
instrument for the economy.
According to Ibrahim, in Europe and the United States, it
had gained traction and some of the leading banks in Europe had also adopted
their own versions of bitcoins.
“Some of the central banks have also adopted it and
are seriously doing everything possible to bring in the emergence of this
invisible products.
“If you are a subscriber, you only know yourselves
and they give you a bit of the bitcoin and in some countries, you can convert
it to cash.
|
“You can make
payments with it because it has been recognised and one of the famous
ex-chief executive of Barclays PLC, Antony Jenkins, have joined the group’s
board of directors,” Ibrahim said
He said that a lot of Nigerians had already started patronising bitcoin, stressing that ‘it had started to creep in and nobody could stop it.
Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central
authority or banks. Nobody owns or controls Bitcoin and everyone can take part.
Its promoters aver that it is more resistant to wild inflation, devaluation,
import policies, currency fixing and corrupt banks. It is a true floating
currency whose value is determined by demand and supply
|
No comments:
Post a Comment