Crypto investments: The good and the ugly

Jan 27, 2021|Adesola Afolabi

Remember those red or bright yellow banners with numerous telecom logos that say “buy your recharge cards here”? The ones that our local kiosks often display to show that they have different digital products? Well, they have a new business now. During a short drive to Iyana Ipaja—the north-western area of Lagos, I spotted their latest product: “buy your bitcoin here”, one of the banners said.

As I drove past, I couldn’t help but wonder how the news of cryptocurrencies had spread to almost all corners of the world. 

Even more impressive is Nigeria’s growing place on the global map. Data from Paxful—a cryptocurrency trading platform, showed Nigeria was second only to the US in volume terms. Between 2015 and 2020, Nigeria traded 60,215 bitcoins—the first and most popular type of cryptocurrency—worth more than $566 million.

But how is such adoption even possible? As with every relatively nascent industry, there

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