Hey Nigerians! Ignore Bitcoin at your own Peril

In November 2015, MMM launched a website targeting the Nigerian audience, also claiming a "30% per month" return including other acquirable bonuses.

MMM is (or was, depending on which country we are talking about) a bonafide Ponzi-Scheme.

A ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation where the operator generates returns for older investors through revenue paid by new investors, rather than from legitimate business activities or profit of financial trading.

Nigerians, while normally skeptical about anything or anyone that will seek to take their monies, seem to fall for such schemes especially when there's group think and FOMO (fear of missing out) involved.

But by the time it was all said and done, it was estimated that Nigerians had lost almost N18B or close to $60m leading to several reports of suicide.

Why did it get this far, this time?

Well, when the great Nigerian recession of 2015 to 2017 hit, many Nigerian business went under given the high dependency of the economy on the price of oil.

Oil prices tanked from a high of almost $130 in the hay days between 2011 and 2013 and dollars were shamelessly spent by politicians and the country as a whole with no thoughts to savings.

So by the time MMM hit and many people had lost businesses and jobs, a 30% ROI seemed like a chance to make up the difference.

Moreover, deep inflation had set in with the Nigerian Naira losing value against the dollar.

The naira was trading at N161.90 to the dollar on October 1st of 2013 to hitting an all time low of N525 in the spring of 2017.

Hosea 4:6 says "my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge"...permit me to take this out of context.

But imagine if instead of chasing MMM, Nigerians instead invested that $60m in Bitcoin starting in November of 2015, today, that $60m would be worth over $800m.

Now, I should state that a lot of people are aware of Bitcoin in Nigeria and many have done really well.

However, if the same money that went into MMM had gone into Bitcoin, it is clear that it could have and would have really changed the outlook of a significant amount of people's life and maybe the Nigerian economy as a whole.

I must state that this is not financial advise but it is time to look in to bitcoin and its benefit as part of a whole financial planning package.

It just might bypass the incoherent economic policies of the Nigerian government and give the average Nigerian a chance at financial freedom.