Two stories are emerging from the world of digital innovation, but whereas one has the semblance of a singular metanarrative, the other has the potential to mark a fork in the road, creating two parallel timelines that will tell the yet-to-be-determined stories of the future. I am referring to the recent legal shift in Nigeria regarding Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and Nvidia, the US technology firm that is poised to take a leading role in the metaverse because of a groundbreaking leap into AI-driven computer chips. These two stories intersect on many levels but shed light on the digital dimension of the world in order to uncover the future of digital transformation.
Nigeria recently made headlines with its announcement that it was dropping tax evasion charges against two senior executives of the Binance cryptocurrency exchange, namely the CEO Changpeng Zhao and his chief operating officer Greg Gopman. As a great number of articles in the international media, including those in such venerable publications as the Financial Times and Reuters granted due prominence to the news, it is important to clarify some aspects of the matter. The tax evasion charges that Nigeria dropped against the executives of the world’s biggest crypto exchange were just one side of the equation. While the Binance executives can heave a sigh of relief on the tax evasion front, they are by no means out of the woods legally, as they still face allegations of money laundering.
Surrounding it is the aura of criminality that has entered the cryptocurrency world of late. But there is one company in the drama that is doing its bit to bring on the metaverse: the multinational tech company Nvidia has announced a new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chip for the metaverse. This is just the beginning of creating the basic technologies we will need to inhabit virtual worlds. The announcement was reported by AnandTech and other tech publications.
This contrast between the Nigerian legal campaign against Binance executives and the metaverse ambitions of Nvidia is a remarkable tale of how legal norms catch up with technology. As countries struggle to keep pace with the rapid innovation of digital currencies, they are creating the legal precedents that will shape the regulation of cryptocurrencies and their technologies for a very long time.
Problems with Binance in Nigeria reflect one small part of a larger global debate on the regulation of cryptocurrencies, from basic tax compliance issues to AML policies to the implications for financial systems generally. Over time, national legal approaches to cryptocurrency will continue to evolve and, as such, the decision that results from cases like Binance’s could have far-reaching implications in international regulatory frameworks.
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