Binance: Nigeria orders cryptocurrency firm to pay $10B

From the article:

> After he came into office last year, President Bola Tinubu scrapped the policy of pegging the naira to the dollar, allowing traders to buy and sell the currency at rates determined by the market. But special advisor Bayo Onanuga said the recent collapse was not the result of normal activity.

> "All of a sudden the exchange rate went through the roof... and it was being caused by the people on Binance platform," he told the BBC Newsday programme.

And later in the article:

> To the frustration of Nigerian users, Binance and several other cryptocurrency firms have been suspended in the country in recent weeks including Coinbase, Kraken, Forextime, OctaFX, Crypto and FXTM in an attempt to halt the slide of the naira.

> In another measure intended to curb foreign-currency trading, Nigeria has closed thousands of bureaux de change.

So they depegged the currency from the dollar, as expected it devalued, then shutdown down forex shops because they’re facilitating people to trade what they feel is the fair market value of the devalued currency.

And then they are angry with the crypto exchanges for effectively doing the same thing as the forex shops they shut down, but now at a wider and less traceable scale.

What’s the end game? Lock down the exchange and force everybody to accept your devalued currency at gun point?

The two arrested executives seem to belong to Binance-the-international-company, not the local subsidiary-or-fake-subsidiary, though. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/02/29/nigeria-detains-b... says that "The two had been invited by Nigeria to meet officials".

This is going to be interesting either way.

Or am I missing something? Did Binance truly do something morally wrong; would the naira have been ok without Binance?

1) people vastly overestimate how much “anonymity and privacy” cryptocurrency gives them (spoiler: far less than using paper money)

2) I’ve never liked this line of reasoning because it’s the same argument for why encryption should have government backdoors.

Keep me honest, if the above is correct, this seems like a dishonest attempt by the Nigerian Government to extort Binance into paying for their poor policies and finances.

It's like claiming a food delivery company is personally responsible for increased fuel prices, when all they do is pay their drivers market rates to deliver food.

Bullshit. Completely unrelated.

I hope Binance retorts Nigerian Government to pound sand.

What’s the difference between this and a Somali pirate or a Bonnie & Clyde attempt? Sophistication? Obfuscation? Complexity?

I’m curious what the tiny group of apologists and stability-seekers lurking in the comments section will say to polish this turd & maintain the status-quo at all costs.