Are you interested in cryptocurrency investment? Do you want to know more about cryptocurrency investment and trading in Nigeria? If yes! I advice you keep reading…. My interest is to help  you as an online user, you make money trading and investing!

In one of my article , I showed you how to use bitcoin in Nigeria. Due to the recent surge in price of bitcoin and popularity, investing in cryptocurrencies is now gaining traction. However, before I dive into cryptocurrency investment and trading in Nigeria; let’s look at:

 What is Cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency is a form of digital money that is designed to be secure and, in many cases, anonymous. It is a currency associated with the internet; it uses cryptography, the process of converting legible information into an almost untraceable code, to track purchases and transfers. Cryptography was born out of the need for secure communication in the Second World War. It has evolved in the digital era with elements of mathematical theory and computer science to become a way to secure communications, information and money.

Cryptocurrency is a medium of exchange, created and stored electronically in the blockchain using encryption techniques to control the creation of monetary units and verify the transfer of funds.  It has no intrinsic value in that it is not redeemable for another commodity such as gold.  It has no physical form and exists only in the network. Its supply is not determined by a central bank and the network is completely de-centralised.

Transaction is known almost immediately by the whole network but only after a specific amount of time it gets confirmed. Coinbase is working hard to ensure immediate confirmation. Confirmation is critical concept in cryptocurrencies. You could say that cryptocurrencies are all about confirmation. As long as a transaction is unconfirmed, it is pending and can be forged. Whenever it is confirmed, it cannot be reverse. This is part of an immutable record of historical transactions of the so-called blockchain. Only miners can confirm transactions. This is their job in a cryptocurrency-network. They take transactions, stamp them as legit and spread them in the network.

Most commonly used Cryptocurrency

Below are the most popular cryptocurrencies;

Bitcoin

The one and only, the first and most famous cryptocurrency is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the best known cryptocurrency . Bitcoin was the first and is the most commonly traded cryptocurrency to date.  The currency was developed by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009, a mysterious figure who developed its blockchain. It has a market capitalisation of around $45 billion as of July 2017.  Bitcoin serves as a digital gold standard in the whole cryptocurrency-industry and it is used as a global means of payment and is the de-facto currency of cyber-crime like darknet markets or ransomware.

After seven years in existence, Bitcoin‘s price has increased from zero to more than 650 Dollar, and its transaction volume reached more than 200.000 daily transactions. There is not much more to say: Bitcoin is here to stay.

Ethereum

Ethereum was developed in 2015. It is the currency token used in the ethereum blockchain, the second most popular and valuable cryptocurrency. Ethereum has a market capitalisation of around $18bn as of July 2017. However, ethereum has had a turbulent journey. After a major hack in 2016 it split into two currencies, while its value has in recent months reached as high as $400 but crashed briefly to as low as 10 cents.

The brainchild of young crypto-genius Vitalik Buterin has ascended to the second place in the hierarchy of cryptocurrencies. Other than Bitcoin its blockchain does not only validate a set of accounts and balances but of so-called states.

This means that Ethereum can not only process transactions but complex contracts and programs. This flexibility makes Ethereum the perfect instrument for blockchain -application. But it comes at a cost. Ethereum itself is a host of several Tokens like DigixDAO and Augur. This makes Ethereum more a family of cryptocurrencies than a single currency.

Ripple

Maybe the less popular – or most hated – project in the cryptocurrency community is Ripple. Ripple is another distributed ledger system that was founded in 2012.   While Ripple has a native cryptocurrency – XRP – it is more about a network to process IOUs than the cryptocurrency itself. XRP, the currency, doesn‘t serve as a medium to store and exchange value, but more as a token to protect the network against spam.   Ripple can be used to track more kinds of transactions, not just of the cryptocurrency. Ripple Labs created every XRP-token, the company running the Ripple network, and is distributed by them on will.

For this reason, Ripple is often called pre-mined in the community and dissed as no real cryptocurrency, and XRP is not considered as a good store of value. Banks, however, seem to like Ripple. At least they adopt the system with an increasing pace. It has been used by banks like Santander and UBS and has a market capitalisation of around $6.3 billion.

Litecoin

Litecoin was one of the first cryptocurrencies after Bitcoin and tagged as the silver to the digital gold bitcoin. Faster than bitcoin, with a larger amount of token and a new mining algorithm, Litecoin was a real innovation, perfectly tailored to be the smaller brother of bitcoin. This currency is most similar in form to bitcoin, but has moved more quickly to develop new innovations, including faster payments and processes to allow many more transactions. The total value of all Litecoin is around $2.1 billion.

“It facilitated the emerging of several other cryptocurrencies which use it’s codebase but made it, even more, lighter“. Examples are Dogecoin or Feathercoin. While Litecoin failed to find a real use case and lost its second place after bitcoin, it is still actively developed and traded and is hoarded as a backup if Bitcoin fails.

Monero

Monero is the most prominent example of the cryptonite algorithm. This algorithm was invented to add the privacy features Bitcoin is missing. If you use Bitcoin, every transaction is documented in the blockchain and the trail of transactions can be followed. With the introduction of a concept called ring-signatures, the cryptonite algorithm was able to cut through that trail.The first implementation of cryptonite, Bytecoin, was heavily premined and thus rejected by the community. Monero was the first non-premined clone of bytecoin and raised a lot of awareness. There are several other incarnations of cryptonote with their own little improvements, but none of it did ever achieve the same popularity as Monero. The popularity of Monero was at its peaked in 2016 when some dark-net markets decided to accept it as a currency. This resulted in a steady increase in the price, while the actual usage of Monero seems to remain disappointingly small.

How Does Cryptocurrency work

Cryptocurrencies use decentralised technology to let users make secure payments and store money without the need to use their name or go through a bank. They run on a distributed public ledger called blockchain, which is a record of all transactions updated and held by currency holders. Units of cryptocurrency are created through a process called mining, which involves using computer power to solve complicated maths problems that generate coins. Users can also buy the currencies from brokers, then store and spend them using cryptographic wallets.

What Central bank of Nigeria (CBN) Says about Cryptocurrency

On January 18, 2017; CBN according to thisday, Warns Against Patronising Bitcoins, Virtual Currencies.

These virtual currencies include; Bitcoin, Swisscoin, ripples, onecoin, magneto, litecoin, dogecoin, peercoin, one-line and others. According to CBN, Virtual currencies (VCs) such as bitcoin, and others, have not been recognised as legal tender in Nigeria but they are already being traded in exchange platforms that are unregulated all over the world.

On August 25, 2017, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) sequel to setting up of an industry committee to look into and articulate a road map for Blockchain and Cryptocurrency regulation has reiterated that it will not hinder the use of digital currencies in Nigeria.  The regulator in a recent brief with industry experts stated that an agreement has been reached to formally adopt its use in Nigeria. A call to the Fintech Association of Nigeria confirms this and it is expected that a regulatory framework for same will be made available soonest.

Cryptocurrency investment and Trading in Nigeria

Cryptocurrencies are digital gold. Sound money that is secure from political influence. Money that could be preserve and it will increase in its value over time. While cryptocurrencies are more used for payment, its use as a means of speculation and a store of value dwarfs the payment aspects. Cryptocurrencies gave birth to an incredibly dynamic, fast-growing market for investors and speculators. Exchanges like Okcoin, poloniex or shapeshift enables the trade of hundreds of cryptocurrencies. Their daily trade volume exceeds that of major European stock exchanges. We have the likes of onecoin, firstcoin, etc. trading high in Nigeria.

One of Nigerian cryptocurrency investor  regrettably said to me today; “ If I had bought 5000$ worth of Firstcoin in February this year at 0.06 cents per coin, it will worth more than 1 million US dollars today as the coins price is 12$ per coin today. According to him that’s how powerful investing in cryptocurrency can be!”

Just like forex trading; in this rich ecosystem of coins and token (cryptocurrence), you will experience extreme volatility. It‘s common that a coin gains 10 percent a day – sometimes 100 percent – just to lose the same at the next day. If you are lucky, your coin‘s value grows up to 1000 percent in one or two weeks. The market of cryptocurrencies is fast and wild. Nearly every day new cryptocurrencies emerge, old die, early adopters get wealthy and investors lose money. Every cryptocurrency comes with a promise, mostly a big story to turn the world around. Few survive the first months, and most are pumped and dumped by speculators and live on as zombie coins until the last bag holder loses hope ever to see a return on his investment. Markets are dirty. But this doesn‘t change the fact that cryptocurrencies are here to stay – and here to change the world.

Investing and Trading Bitcoin in Nigeria

Bitcoin remains by far the most famous cryptocurrency ever traded.   Most other cryptocurrencies have zero non-speculative impact. As an Investors and users of cryptocurrencies, you have to keep an eye on several cryptocurrencies.  MMM Nigeria has expose many Nigerian Youths to the used of Bitcoin

Buying and selling bitcoins is probably the fastest and easiest way to make some money with bitcoin. Just like the stock market, bitcoin trading involves buying at a low cost and selling when the price has gone up. Bitcoin is a volatile currency which means the rate can rise or fall several times day with margin of $10-100 per bitcoin value.

To start trading bitcoin;

Sign up for bitcoin wallet

signing up for a Bitcoin wallet is easy when done on the web. Web wallets such as info have become popular lightweight alternatives to downloading the whole Bitcoin application core. Navigating to the Blockchain.info website at the top you can select to create a new wallet. Within a few minutes through the guided prices you can choose your own password and are eventually greeted by the dashboard which shows all incoming and outgoing transactions as well as our balance.

Buy bitcoin

Bitcoin can be bought peer to peer from other users in Nigeria but for added security and a premium rate for you Naira, NairaEx  has been recommended as the best exchange in Nigeria currently offering unbeatable rates on your Naira when converting. You can buy cheaply and sell at profits within a matter of minutes as exchanges such as NairaEX offer some of the most competitive rates on Bitcoin. Purchasing Bitcoin will also allow you to delve into trading alternative

Start trading 

Sign Up NOW on NairaEx to start trading bitcoin today!

Investing in bitcoin in Nigeria

Bitcoin is scarce like gold. This is due to the limited supply of Bitcoin. There are going to be only 21 million Bitcoin ever. Yes, EVER! Out of that only about 16 million is in circulation now, as the rest are continually being mined. With bitcoin you can invest for the future. For Nigerians, Bitcoin can serve as a high profit investment, due to the behavior of the Nigerian Naira in the foreign exchange market.

Last 2years ago; 5 Bitcoins worth $1,000 because each, Bitcoin was about $200. The equivalent naira rate for 5 Bitcoins was about #220,00 because each dollar was worth #220 on the black market. Fast forward a year later, the same number of Bitcoins now worth about $2,915 since the value of each bitcoin has gone up from $200 to about $583, and the equivalent naira rate for 5 Bitcoins would now be #1,078,550.  Today being October 18, 2017; 1BTC = 5605.85 USD

My friend was right when he said, “that’s how powerful investing in cryptocurrency can be”

Institutional investors have started to buy cryptocurrencies. Banks and governments are now realizing that this invention has the potential to draw their control away. Cryptocurrencies is  changing the world gradually. You can either stand beside, observe -or you can become part of history in the making.