One man's meat is another man's poison
If you're a Nigerian living in Nigeria, buying and holding cryptocurrency is a no brainer. Other than the fact that I can capitalise on their volatility for short term gains, I can also mine some and sell to fund my life.
However, moving away from the volatility, there's no immediate benefit for holding them. In fact, the naira is quite terrible in the market and does terribly against the dollar on a daily basis.
So it's basically a case of one man's meat being another man's poison. Every day I come online and read posts about people whining about the shitty dollar.
It's sort of funny to me because while fiat ain't shit in the long term, the fiat you're running away from is exactly what the doctor ordered.
Perspective
The dollar might be getting printed to infinity and it might be doing poorly against Bitcoin. However, that doesn't have any direct connection to how Naira performs.
In fact, in Nigeria, the much-derided dollar has been our Bitcoin for a long time. In the past, people just bought dollar and held it for years.
This feeling of assurance is borne out of historical data. If you zoom out of the dollar/naira chart for the past ten years, you'll find a grim image for naira at least.
So if your naira isn't going to be spent in the short or mid-term, there's really no point in holding it. Also, if you don't have any connection with a crypto project or like the tech, you can simply hold Dollar and let the Naira continue it's slide to the abyss.
So for people in Nigeria who live off crypto earnings and have to convert gains to naira before spending, things are different because our gains put the expo on exponential.
Naturally, losses move in the same pattern. Moving from poor to super-rich happens as fast as moving from rich to homeless. I think this also applies to people living in places like Venezuela, Uganda and anywhere with shitty currency.
So in summary, as much as crypto gives us protection from shitty fiat, holding dollar is also an option. In the short term, stable coins give us instant and virtually risk-free gains.
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https://twitter.com/belemo__/status/1371881132183203842
We don't have problems with inflation in here but ever since I can remember people were holding their savings in other currency. There was the DM soon after the 90's and the USD as well and now it's EURO and even crypto for the ones knowing about it.
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Wait, you don't use Euro in Romania?
No. We have our own NAIRA :))
Our national currency is called RON but we also address to it as LEU from as long as I can remember and it's translated to English as Lion/LEO.
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Well that's pretty fucking cool. You've been a Leo before leofinance was even born 😄.
Indeed. We're the land of LEOs. Most of us in a coma... but yeah...
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Makes sense. I wanted to know how much of these new crypto payment technologies have made inroads in Nigeria and other economies in Africa? I know that Binance is pushing its card for crypto payments and there are other independent mobile applications that allow you to use and hold crypto assets.
Crypto in Nigeria is a dicey topic. It is not illegal but financial institutions are banned from enabling transactions. That means it will be difficult for binance to support naira transactions.
Then again, you can buy and sell naira through binance, so they could connect to the network or whatever and facilitate direct naira transactions. Who knows?
Your are very correct, about dollar being out bitcoin in the past.
I heard somewhere that back in the days that 1 naira is equals to one pounds
Now see how far we have gone. I feel sorry for those still doubting cryptocurrency.
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When I read posts from Nigerians and Venezuelans I low key feel ashamed to complain about the shit I have to deal with seems petty AF
It's all about perspective tbh. Everybody has a right to demand for improvement.