Industry Trends
What is new is who gets paid. With Circle's USDC or Tether's USDT, the issuer keeps the interest earned on the reserves. That interest income is a large part of how both companies make money.
HostFi
In February 2021, the Central Bank of Nigeria ordered banks to close any account linked to cryptocurrency. The move was meant to curb money laundering and consumer risk. Instead, it pushed an entire market underground.
Industry Trends
None of this rules out tap-to-pay in Nigeria. It simply means the country is earlier on the adoption curve than South Africa or Morocco, with infrastructure catching up piece by piece.
Educational
Crypto promised an exit. Permissionless, borderless, no intermediary taking a cut or freezing your account. The vision was compelling enough to attract trillions of dollars and a generation of developers. But for most ordinary people, that vision has remained frustratingly out of reach...