By Moses Nosike

Mr. Peter Ayoade Moradeyo is the Chief Executive Officer/Principal Consultant, Crypto Plus Certified. In this interview with Moses Nosike, he revealed that Bitcoin is an electronic money that can be transferred from one holder to another without a third party(Bank). Also, for one to own a Bitcoin,one must have a Bitcoin account called Bitcoin wallet.Bitcoin(electronic money) is a legal tender disruption- the future of currency revealed. Excerpts:

How do you explain Bitcoin, block chain and Cryptocurrencies?

Moradeyo

The success story of Cryptocurrency dates back to 2009, during the financial breakout, when Bitcoin was formed on blockchain technology. Bitcoin was first introduced in Asian countries and gradually to Europe, US etc. It is needful to clarify however, that the blockchain technology is not the same thing as Bitcoin; the relationship between them is only that Bitcoin is deployed on the blockchain technology. Interestingly, Bitcoin seems to be more popular today than the platform on which it stands. Now, there are two things which distinguish Cryptocurrency from the normal currencies.

The first is that it is finite. It has a fixed number that can be taken off and immediately that happens, its value shoots up and we all know that anything that can finish naturally increases in value as it is being taken up. So, as the world gradually adopts Cryptocurrency, the available number reduces and value automatically drives upwards, causing it to grow dynamically in value. That explains why Bitcoin has been able to grow like that since 2009.

The second thing is that Cryptocurrency has intrinsic value or what some call store of value. Let me explain it this way: each copy of a coin is an address, a location on the blockchain. When one address belongs to a person, that address cannot belong to another person in any part of the world. This is unlike the fiat counterpart where any money reading on a person’s bank account means that the bank owes the account holder to the tune of the said amount, but not necessarily that money is there for the account holders to cash at any time. This is why sometimes the banks would tell an account holder that they do not have enough cash to complete a transaction. The case of the blockchain is different because the value is intrinsic and better preserved.

What is the function of Crypto Plus Certified?

Since 2009, Bitcoin and several other alt coins have been coming up. Alt coins are referred to as alternative coins to Bitcoin which is the first and most popular of them all. At a point, we realized there was an opportunity where Bitcoin and other coins can relate in value – there is value relativity between them. So we started by trading Cryptocurrency. I can recall that sometimes in 2015, there was an upsurge of certain Ponzis in Nigeria. Nigerians sustained the following Ponzis until it became almost endemic. Unfortunately, very few Nigerians knew about the very essence of the medium of transfer which Bitcoin was during transaction of these Ponzis. Bitcoin was only used because it didn’t need a third party like banks to facilitate a transaction between the Ponzis and her victims. So the Ponzis took advantage of their patronage, cashing in on the anonymity of transaction which was part of the features of Cryptocurrency. What was supposed to have been an advantage became a disadvantage because of the ignorance of Nigerians.

Someone needed to educate Nigerians appropriately as to what Cryptocurrency really meant and what disruption it was meant to address. So, we now came up because before now, we have a deep background on its trading. We decided to reappraise the image of Cryptocurrency as it were in Nigeria.

Also, in several conferences we have been in many parts of the world, we realized that Africans are non-existent on several Cryptocurrency trading platforms. Just like we have the Nigerian Stock Exchange with several companies trading on its platform, there are also several participating bodies that trade value among us. The sad thing here is that Africans are non-existent on any Cryptocurrency exchange whether in US, Asia or Europe. This is also true when one considers Cryptocurrency graph. The Asians are up there, Europe and America are there too, but Africa is non- existent. Our function at Crypto Plus Certified is basically to close the knowledge gap so that people can take advantage available and then Nigeria can be enlisted on what we call the global Cryptocurrency exchange.

We trace the current state of Cryptocurrency trading to slowness of adoption.

How do you achieve your target of engaging 1000 Nigerians on the Poloniex Exchange, and why the choice of Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt?

We need to make it clear that Nigeria is a country with many opportunities. We also need to state that Bitcoin came into Nigeria with a wrongly perceived image, and on the wrong platform. So, our first goal is to take the responsibility to repair that image, and then reappraise the benefits and enlist Nigeria as a participant in the normal trading of Cryptocurrency.

In order to achieve that, we launched what we called, ‘Dream 1000’. It is all about trading on Poloniex which is the largest Crypto exchange in America and we are currently working with them on releasing a mobile platform strictly for Nigerians and it will work as an arbitrage with our own exchange which will come from Germany. We want to work as an arbitrage so that they will trade on our own platform via the mobile interface. Nigerians can be taught on how to trade this currency easily, and our strategy is very unique because the mobile application is actually enhanced to  reduce all the variables of trading system. Since we launched the ‘Dream 1000’ recently in Lagos, we have had some of our students who were able to distinguish themselves with the level of knowledge we passed to them and they are going to show Nigerians that we are serious about what we are here to do.

How is the response so far?

I grew up in Nigeria before I decided to relate with other countries for business reasons. One thing I know about Nigerians is that they respond to results. So, the first thing we want to identify is, we want to be able to have people who have had results and that is why all the events we have done, we have been showcasing people that distinguished themselves, those to whom we passed the knowledge and they applied it and got results.

Can Bitcoin be regulated and taxed?

Those conversant with information coming out of Crypto Plus Certified would have noticed that Nigeria is currently on a discourse on how to regulate Cryptocurrency trading based on several frameworks. I have several write ups regarding this. Cryptocurrency trading as it were is decentralized and this is why the banking system cannot operate it. It is decentralized because of its nature. For instance, Bitcoin does not have a management interface and that is why the regulation has not been somewhat forthcoming. But it is found to be very secured and has ability to store values. That has been the reason for all the enquiries on how do we have a framework for a kind of currency that has these kind of features? Sometimes, it takes time, but individuals are working and several people have stored values on it and exchanged it with another. The US is an example where Poloniex is operating.