Nairametrics| Umaru Ibrahim, the Managing Director/Chief Executive of the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) has come out over the weekend to label the emerging virtual currencies, the most popular of which is Bitcoin, as ‘disruptive innovation’. He said this during an interview with a Sun News correspondent.
According to him the emergence of virtual currencies could be as dangerous, if not dangerous than the activities of wonder banks in Nigeria, such as the rapidly floundering MMM. “Another interesting phenomenon in the market is the emergence of what you may know as bitcoin, a technology-based project. I understand many Nigerians have started patronising it…. They are not even money, they are supposed to be something like virtual money”.
Umaru was of the opinion that the unregulated nature of the currency made it illegal as well as dangerous to transact in and therefore classified it as disruptive innovation. “You don’t need any CBN or fiscal bank to transact with it. If you are a subscriber, you only know yourself and they give you a bit of the bitcoin and in some countries you can convert it to cash, you can make payments with it. This is disruptive innovation and disrupts the right modalities of doing things.”
After saying this, Umaru however noted that the NDIC and the CBN had constituted a committee “to have an in-depth study of this phenomenon; its advantages and disadvantages, safety and security; what it means for money laundering, what it means to corruption or crime or quantum of mere money instruments to the economy, among others”
Does this man truly understands what ‘disruptive innovation’ is?