Nigerian Stock Exchange Moves to Adopt Blockchain To Settle Transactions
- There is a move by the Nigerian stock Exchange to adopt blockchain, the technology responsible for cryptocurrency
- This is to lure young Nigerians, says the exchange's CEO Temi Popoola who says the exchange will deploy it to grow the market
- Cryptocurrency trading is restricted in Nigeria by its apex bank but young Nigerians have side-stepped ban to trade in digital currency
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The Nigerian stock exchange has begun moves to adopt the use of blockchain for settling transactions across its platforms in order to lure young investors, according to Temi Popoola, the exchange CEO.
Bloomberg report quoted Popoola as saying that young and entrepreneurial young Nigerians prefer this kind of technology and the exchange wants to see if it can deploy it to grow the market.
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A move to lure Nigeria youths
Blockchain is the technology that powers cryptocurrency. The invention will come at a time of efforts by policymakers and businesses in Africa to make use of the technology to promote trade.
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Capital market watcher, the Securities and Exchange Commission also disclosed regulatory plans for digital asset transactions.
There lull in the crypto market after the crash of Terra blockchain last which saw over $40 billion loss in the industry and Bitcoin plummeting more than half after it reached all-time high eights in November last year.
Premium Times reports that Nigerian youths are the biggest crypto users in the world after the US, citing a report by Paxful, a crypto exchange platform.
Will they embrace the blackchain?
Analysts believe the new policy will be a welcome idea by the teeming youth population in Nigeria who have used investment in crypto to circumvent Nigeria’s inflation and the Central Bank of Nigeria’s regulation on cryptocurrency.
Nigeria’s inflation moved from 12.3 per cent to 16.8 per cent between April 2019 and April 2022.
According to Popoola, blockchain technology can promote different parts of the capital market, whether around the creation of products or facilitation of the Exchange to trade financial assets.
His firm hopes to develop synergy with a technology company and get a go-ahead from regulators ahead of next year’s launch.
Nigeria’s central bank placed a restriction on banks, asking them to close any account still trading in crypto.
Popoola said bringing digitization to trade will pave the way for bringing young investors interested in diversified products into the fold while helping them gain seamless access to the market.
Crypto investors made $163 billion in 2021 as Nigeria in missing from the top 50 countries
Legit.ng reported that 2021 was the year of cryptos as investors made a whopping $162.7 billion in profits, a report by blockchain analytics company, Chainalysis said.
This is up by over 400 per cent from the $32.5 billion realised gain noticed in 2020.
Expectedly, investors in the United States took the major part of the profits accounting for approximately $47 billion of the total realised gains which are 29 per cent of the total amount, Nairametrics reports said.
Source: Legit.ng
