The entire premise of instituting forex taxes is to prevent national currencies from being exploited by extranational investors. I think that’s a feature, and not a bug if the e-naira is not seen as a good speculative investment. As we have seen from the recent market meltdowns, tying a national currency to the speculative investment cycle would seem to be a long-term net-negative approach considering most countries that have long histories of forex trading currently have high levels of taxation to discourage their currencies from becoming too volatile.
If we are discussing the notion of “money” compared to a “commodity”, the notion of “good money”,“bad money”, and “ideal money” have emerged as concepts originally put forth by John Nash. In that framework, the e-naira would be closer to “good money” than “bad money” in comparison to the regular naira, but in that context bitcoin is not “ideal money” either.
A good “speculative investment” will likely not be the same economic vehicle that serves as “good” or “ideal” money when it is acknowledged that “money” is not meant to be a “store” of value but a representation of value. In a fiat currency, that representation is tied to an ecosystem or national economy compared to a pegged currency which is tied to a commodity or other currency. Pegged currencies make better “stores” of value than “investment vehicles” and conflating the two often makes the discussion around CBDCs oriented towards a conversation that is inclined towards investment and not “store of value”.
Fighting depreciation and speculative investment have two completely different motivations but would seem to have the same goal to a casual observer. I think it is in this regard that looking at bitcoin as a catch-all for both speculative investment and as a money that is resistant to inflation muddles the conversation about why things like stablecoins exist in the web3 space. If the web3 space did not understand the need for less-volatile value storage mechanisms, then stablecoins would not exist. It becomes disingenuous for the web3 space to create stablecoins without acknowledging that the mechanism is there for stability; while further acknowledging that it is completely logical for nations to push for more stable national currencies from their perspective.
I have been saying for years that it is not logical for a government to cede control over a sovereign currency. I think it is optimistic, but it is not a logical proposal to any significant government to completely transition to a cryptocurrency that was not created by that nation. In this context, the CBDC is the most logical solution from a government standpoint when their currency has reached a certain GDP. The Nigerian government’s GDP is too large to consider tying too much into a non-sovereign currency before they would trial their own CBDC. I think all-or-nothing proposals are not going to be practical from any government’s standpoint which is why these pilots and trials are likely going to be more common than trials with Bitcoin like in El Salvador.