Prof. Kingsley Moghalu, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), blamed the Central Bank of Nigeria for the blanket ban on trading crypto.
Moghalu believes that the bank should have done more thinking before and also be more innovative so that it can stay in front of the curve and keep up with technology.
He also added that “it has a value on its own and some people will say it is not backed by any fundamental but there are many reasons. One of them is that many people just want the freedom to exchange value without having to go through the restrictions of fiat money that is issued by the central banks.”
Regarding the ban, Prof Morghalu said: “I would have preferred some deep thinking about how to come up with a regulatory framework that restricts the use of cryptocurrency or subject it to some sort of surveillance that alerts the CBN if there are serious abuses that can affect financial system stability. The CBN has to be concerned about the financial system stability and that is what it should be concerned about. So you have to be able to monitor and see if there signs of coming…but to ban a financial institution from having an account associated with cryptocurrency exchange or cryptocurrency trading seems to me a bit … it was not necessarily the best approach to the problem that is what I think even though I understand why they (did what they did).”
Morghalu also believes that the ban is an indicator of a regulatory dysfunction since the SEC categorizes crypto as a financial asset, but the CBN doesn’t.