There have been wide speculations that the financial market is aimed at using a single currency to conduct businesses around the world. This speculations have always been ignored or dismissed due to the lack of substantial evidence and also the sophistication that will pull off such a project. However, the picture became much clearer in 2017 when the first crypto currency (bitcoin) price hiked close to about twenty thousand dollars. Before this hike, very few people really understood crypto currency and the effect it could even have on the world; everyone thought it was just an online scam or a hoax that will not see the light of the day. After bitcoin showed its potential to be a trusted and a secure coin to use for trade across the world, it began to generate a lot of interest among developers and other people. Soon after, bitcoin became the anchor for different crypto currencies such as Ethereum, Litcoin, Bitcoin cash etc.
The inception of crypto currencies gave people the opportunity to transfer funds digitally without needing a bank (decentralization) and that was a great news for people that continuously complained about bank services. In many countries around the world, the idea of crypto currency differs and this distinction plays a role as to how people tend to use cryptos. In this essay I will share my journey as a crypto enthusiast and also discuss the effect crypto currency have in my country (Nigeria).
My Journey towards the use of crypto currency began in 2018 at the American University of Nigeria. I remembered sitting with my friends in the study room of the library on a Friday discussing how to make money online. We discussed many things from starting a YouTube channel, taking online surveys, websites reviews and forex; after watching a lot of YouTube videos on our options I settled on trading forex because it seemed like the best option because I saw how money was made live and it was exciting.
With great optimism and zero understanding of the forex market, I opened a trading account with a forex broker (IQ Option) with about fifty dollars; I then immediately began trading with a very naïve mind but surprisingly, I made about twenty five dollars on the first day. The feeling was just great not knowing that I was only lucky for the trade to fall in my favor considering that I did not use any form of strategy. On the second day, I was very eager to trade considering my success to the prior day but this time around I made a huge loss (about $30), that still did not stop me and I continued trading until my account was zero. That was when I realized that I did not know what I was doing and it was time to reflect and start studying about forex before trading again. At the course of my research, that was where I discovered bitcoin and it seemed like an exciting technology and so I committed more time to studying it.
But my study about bitcoin was interrupted when a friend of mine informed me about a certain website that gives about twenty-five percent of bitcoin after 24 hours of deposit into their platform. I was carried away by that and decided to give it a try. It was around Mid-November 2018 at the time and the price of bitcoin was significantly high so I could not buy one bitcoin, instead I bought $50 worth of bitcoin and deposited it on the platform. After 24 hours as stated by the website I checked on by account on the platform and it was $75, I was really happy and I continued depositing into the platform setting my personal target to $1000 before the end of the year. After a continuous deposit for about a week, I completely trusted the website not knowing that they had their own agendas.
On Tuesday of the second week, I deposited about $200 confidently and anticipating a return of $250 the next day but as I tried to withdraw the money on Wednesday from their website and send it to my own bitcoin wallet, the transaction did not go through. I was surprised by it considering that it has never happened before so I reached out to one of their online agent and he said I have to pay $50 to process the transaction because by bitcoin wallet was rejecting the initial transfer. As inexperience as I was and with little knowledge of how bitcoin wallets work, I decided to deposit $50 to the platform so that my $250 can be sent to my wallet but that did not happen. I decided to reach out to the online agent again and this time around he came up with another trick by saying that my transaction is pending and I need to deposit $100 to reactivate the account to process all my request. He further assured me that I will receive all the money that is pending after the deposit but I did not fall for that anymore, instead I reached out to my friend that introduced me into the platform and explained everything. To my surprised he told me he had $500 that was still pending, that was when I realized we fell for an online scam under the use of Bitcoin.
The experiences I had was a turning point for me because I realized the lack of understanding for emerging technologies can be used against you and to take advantage of you. Conversely, I was still interested in bitcoin and I continued my research on it; after a month of research I learned a lot about different crypto currencies, their benefit and primary purpose of creation. I further understood that if I was to go into bitcoin to actually make money instead of using it as my own decentralized bank, I need to mine it using a console. As a student with needs, I decided to make a short term commitment into mining bitcoin and it actually paid off; I was able to earn little because of the small processing power of my console but it was still worth it because I finally understood what I was doing.
As mentioned earlier, the idea of using crypto currency differs from one country to the other. While in countries like America, people commit to crypto currency as a convenient means of transferring cash, buying groceries and many other things, in Nigeria the majority of people are into crypto currencies to make money. It has become a common trend for Nigerians to scalp the internet looking for sites they can earn money by depositing a certain amount of a digital coin.
Recently a platform known as Supersage was launched where you can deposit Tron coin and earn 100% of your investment by referring people to the platform. This is clearly a Ponzi scheme but Nigerians fail to understand this simply because of insufficient knowledge of crypto currencies and how they work. This is just one of the many platforms that Nigerians deposit different crypto currencies to earn by referrals, but these sites are like ticking bombs ready to explode at any time taking many victims with them. Another effect of crypto currency in Nigeria that is gaining more attention recently is ICT. Developers in Nigeria have recently began to leverage the Blockchain technology to build mobile applications for the government and other private organizations. These Applications has been described by many as extremely fast and secure compared to the native way in which mobile applications are build and also hosted.
There is no doubt that crypto currencies have given our world a new dimension and the possibility of using a single currency might now be considered a possibility than ever, its future will be largely dependent on our understanding. Just like in Nigeria where many of its citizens are into it to make money and also to build faster mobile applications, in other countries its use are largely for conducting businesses such as cash transfer and buying goods & services. The impact of crypto currency is yet to be seen by many countries and therefore it is important that people really understand its application and use in order to benefit from this technology.
