HSBC TD bank Wells Fargo and others as this takes place Nigeria has gone from rolling out a digital currency to forcing it on its citizens by restricting the amount of physical cash people can withdraw Central Bank digital currencies not only represent a new form of money but also new potential for
Tyrannical social controls now this is according to Nick corbishly investigative journalist and author of scanned why vaccine passports and digital IDs will mean the end of privacy and personal freedom we speak with corbishly about why what’s happening with digital currencies in New York and Nigeria matter for the world now digital
Currencies can be used by authoritarian regimes and where the world is heading if the new form of currency is not challenged Nick corbishly great having you back on Crossroads well it’s great to be here thanks for the invite you know Nick one of the biggest stories that happened recently I think was easy
To miss which was in Nigeria of all places and people might wonder why Nigeria you know matters to us in the west right what what does it matter they recently made a new ruling when it comes to the digital currencies and I I want to talk about what happened there
And why this matters tell us what happened first okay so this this is a story that came to light when the Central Bank essentially announced that as of January the 9th and this coming year the Bank basically people will only be able to uh withdraw something like 45 dollars per
Day from their bank accounts and this is like an 87 reduction in what they normally are able to to withdraw from their bank accounts it’s a massive change in in people’s lives it’s a huge huge um a huge policy to have suddenly announced at a time that Nigeria’s economy is struggling
And at a time that the central bank is desperately trying to rescue the Salvage a digital currency that it launched uh roughly just over a year ago that has essentially flopped interesting so Nigeria the central banks are tried rolling at a digital currency people didn’t want it and basically when
It was on its way to failing because people want to use cash still the government starts restricting the amount of people the amount of cash people can take out uh interestingly at a time when they really need it yes so what what does that say to us like you know is it
It doesn’t mean they’re forcing this agenda on people uh and then at what cost like you know tell us about this we have at the moment uh maybe your viewers already know something like 90 of the central banks on the planet are experimenting or are looking into launching uh digital currency but very
Few have actually gone as far as Nigeria and the Central Bank of Nigeria launched the What’s called the E naira in October last year and like I said it’s been an incredible flop it’s only managed to I think it’s my managed to get something like a million just under a million
People to download the application that allows people to use this Central Bank digital currency but of those only somewhere 280 000 people are actually using it and this isn’t a country where the population around 220 million people so the uptake has been around about 0.1 percent
And this is despite the facts I mean to put it this way despite the fact that the central bank has done everything and the government have done everything they can to encourage people to use it they have they have banned Banks from um allowing transactions or enabling transactions involving cryptocurrencies
In a country where cryptocurrencies are gaining more and more um interest and so so after a year we were in this position where it seemed like it wasn’t working so what the Central Bank did was it said we are going to we’re going to do what’s called demonetization
Now this is something that happened in India in 2016 with absolutely devastating consequences for ordinary Indian people Indian businesses and the Indian economy is well established that this had a huge impact on economic growth in India for at least a year or two basically demonetization involves withdrawing high value notes from the
Economy in order to reintroduce the notes in a in a new format the problem with it is that it can also be used to reduce the ability of people to use cash which is precisely what I want a month or so ago in an article about this low
Behold this week the the central bank has announced that they are going to engage in what in my view one of the most aggressive um Wars on cash that we have seen in the last decade so a lot of people in Nigeria do not have bank accounts
So a lot of people get cash through a point of sales transactions so it’s like they’re getting cash back um and this is how most people live and by the Central Bank saying like we are essentially going to reduce significantly reduce how much you can do
That is going to have an enormous impact on people’s ability to survive it’s going to have an impact on businesses ability to have enough cash cash flow um and it’s going to have a significant impact on an economy and a currency that are already in serious trouble
