The Central Bank of Nigeria announced it will begin, effective in January, restricting cash withdrawals from banks and ATMs to just $45 per day as part of a push to move the country toward a cashless economy.
If this were a one-off, I wouldn’t bother writing about it. But it comes on the heels of mega-banks announcing similarly creepy new policies in recent months in China, India, Russia, Brazil, Sweden, the U.S. and many other nations, all pointing to an imminent switch over to a global digital money system.
In the U.S., the Federal Reserve put out an announcement in November that it is launching a 12-week “pilot program” to test out a new central bank digital currency, or CBDC, with six major banks.
Thursday’s announcement in Nigeria is also a big deal because Nigeria is one of only nine countries that have already launched an official CBDC. That happened earlier this year, and now they are already moving to restrict the use of cash. This proves that digital currencies were never designed to function alongside paper currencies but rather to replace them.