Nigeria launches cryptocurrency 'eNaira' amid 'explosion' in peer-to-peer trading

Emily Parker, CoinDesk Global Macro Editor, discusses the Nigerian crypto market as it launches first digital currency.

Video transcript

- Nigeria is just the latest country to launch a central bank digital currency. 500 million eNaira have been minted so far, with a value topping $1 million. Let's bring in Emily Parker. She's CoinDesk global macro editor. And Emily, you know, Nigeria, no surprise, has been a big player in the crypto space, but interesting developments here, given that they did, in fact, earlier this year ban transactions, specifically with crypto in the banking sector.

EMILY PARKER: Yes, Nigeria is a really interesting crypto market. So as you said, they banned banks from interacting directly with crypto, but that didn't seem to stop crypto from booming in Nigeria. So even after that happened, Nigerians still found ways to trade crypto. So there was an explosion in peer to peer trading. That's something that happened even after the ban. And as far as I understand, the crypto economy in Nigeria is still alive and well.

- Yeah, I mean, we've seen a lot of different use cases there in terms of the continent of Africa as that's moved forward, and a lot of companies have focused in on trying to help with cryptocurrency. Back here in the States, though, we did hear from SEC chair Gary Gensler at Yahoo Finance's All Markets Summit about what his thoughts are looking like, given last week's, I guess, enthusiasm around the Bitcoin futures ETF listings. But it doesn't sound like he changed his minds when it comes to a Bitcoin spot ETF. Just want to play what he told us. Take a listen.

GARY GENSLER: You can imagine I'm not going to speak to any individual filings that might be in front of us or prejudge anything, but I think that the concern for the investing public is the crypto asset space, two plus-- $2.5 trillion, most of it has not come within an investor protection remit. And thus, investors are protected the way they are, whether they go into the stock or bond markets that we've overseen for so long. Without that, I think that this really is, as I've said to others, a bit of the Wild West. And these markets largely, around the globe, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, don't have the similar protections against fraud and manipulation and front-running and other abuses.

- Granted, you know, obviously futures trading on the [INAUDIBLE] different than kind of a Bitcoin spot, and we all know that. But I mean, what's your take maybe there in terms of really leaning into the investor protections that Gary Gensler is talking about in preventing a Bitcoin spot ETF?

EMILY PARKER: So it's worth noting that his position is quite controversial, especially within the cryptocurrency community. So for example, some of my colleagues-- [? Jodie ?] [? Ginsberg, ?] Michael [? Casey-- ?] have pointed out that this Bitcoin futures ETF isn't necessarily good for investors, and in fact, they might get lower returns than if they invested in Bitcoin directly. So that sort of raises the question of, like, if the whole idea is investor protection, are you actually protecting investors by not letting them invest in a Bitcoin spot ETF.

Another point of controversy here, which has been brought up even within the SEC, is this idea that the SEC is potentially holding digital assets like Bitcoin to a different standard than other assets, and that, you know, should the SEC be making this decision for investors about what is risky or not. So there's definitely a lot of controversy around this, but as you said, it doesn't sound like his position has really changed. And it also does not sound like we are going to be seeing a spot Bitcoin-- spot Bitcoin ETF somewhere in the immediate future.

- CoinDesk global macro editor Emily Parker, always good to have you stop by the show.