Michael Saylor, the founder of Microstrategy, believes that if President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration wants to end starvation in Nigeria, it must adopt bitcoin and invest billions of dollars.
Saylor believes that in order to fix Nigeria, the country should purchase $2 billion or $3 billion in bitcoin and issue currency backed by cryptocurrency. His advice comes nine months after the country’s central bank prohibited cryptocurrency exchanges and cryptocurrency banking transactions.
Godwin Emefiele, the central bank governor, stated in February that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are used to fund terrorism and aid in money laundering.
Saylor, whose company owns 114,042 bitcoins purchased for $3.16 billion but now valued at $7.01 billion (based on current prices), stated in a video released on Tuesday that bitcoin is the solution to preventing people from starving to death.
The billionaire worth $2.6 billion, said, “You wanna fix your country like Nigeria, or Zimbabwe? The way you fix your country is you buy $2 billion, $3 billion worth of bitcoin and you issue currency backed by the bitcoin.
“That is the bitcoin standard. And every one of your citizens stops starving to death. And they live a decent life.” Saylor said in the video.
Only one country, El Salvador, has adopted bitcoin as a national currency, with many others, including Nigeria and China, preferring to issue their own government-backed digital asset.
Unlike bitcoin, which ensures privacy from third parties due to its decentralization mode, the CBDC allows the government to regulate digital currency and monitor transactions made with the virtual coin.
Nigeria has created its own CBDC, known as eNaira. It was supposed to go live on October 1, but the central bank has postponed it until further notice.
Although Nigerians can still trade bitcoin through the peer-to-peer model, they can’t deposit it into their bank accounts because Emefiele has directed banks to close crypto-related accounts.
