The Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN) on Tuesday  said its  directive to banks to discontinue transactions on crypto currency was to protect Nigerians involved in transparent  bank transactions.

CBN’s Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele said this at an interactive session with  members of  Senate Joint  Committees on Banking, Capital Market and ICT.

Recall that, Senate had on Feb.11 at  plenary mandated its joint committees to invite the CBN Governor, and Director General of Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) to brief the committee on circumstances leading to ban on cryptocurrency transactions.

Addressing the lawmakers at an interactive session with stakeholders in financial institutions in the country,Emefiele in his presentation said:

“Let  me state that this decision is in the best interest of every well meaning Nigerian, who have nothing  to hide and is happy to have traceble  and transparent  dealings in our financial  system.”

He said cryptocurrency  was a currency issued  by largely unknown, unregulated elements using computer that are basically encrypted .

Consequently, he  said transactions on cryptocurrency was designed to hide information about the transactions and the operators,adding  the cruptocurrency  model  was created out of a thin air.

“Cryptocurrency is used  to describe  the activities of traders in an electronic dark world where transactions are extremely opaque, not visible and not transparent.

“These are people who deal in transactions that  do not want to be trailed.

“The definitions  of cryptocurrency was  scary enough to scare  anxiety for any regulator or Central Banker  in any part of the world and that is the reason,  virtually all regulators in the world did not recognise it.”