I received an airdrop from the Central bank

Around February, I completed a series of articles for a European company that offers a crypto product. There was no nondisclosure agreement but I always keep my client's information secret, unless there's a need to publicize it, so I will not be divulging the name. However, I will talk about other aspects of the deal as it led to an airdrop from the government.

As I've said on numerous occasions, the naira has been on a downswing for quite some time now, so the federal government of Nigeria has taken steps to mitigate the slide. One move that was well documented and very frustrating was to limit dollar purchases at the official rate to $100 per transaction.

The second move was to incentivize holding Naira or better yet, injecting foreign currency into the economy. As documented by the Premium times the CBN will pay 5 Naira for ever dollar received by an individual in Nigeria.

Government airdrop

So as I said earlier, I had an arrangement with the crypto company and they were to pay me $800. I naturally requested to be paid in crypto but they had some issues that prevented them from using that channel. After going through different options, we settled for Western Union to make the transaction.

For what it's worth, this is the first time I have ever used this money transfer service and as far as first impressions go, it is crappy. After two failed transactions that kept me waiting for over a week, the third one went through and even that one took two whole days. Cryptocurrency fixes this, but I digress.

So after much waiting, the third transaction finally went through, and then I received this pleasant message from my bank.

I was initially confused when I saw it, and so I decided to go to the bank to confirm. The teller then told me that it was a CBN policy that rewards 5 naira for every dollar you bring into the country. So, in my own small way, I have contributed to the improvement of the dollar by receiving dollars.

Thanks to the money I received in dollars, a domiciliary account was generated for me and I completed all the updates and stuff. I spent hours in the bank filling annoying paperwork and all the while, I was just thinking about how using cryptocurrencies makes life so much easier.

So that's the story of how I got paid for getting paid. A considerable portion of the money was moved to my Naira account and will be used for handling life stuff that it had already been budgeted for.

The exchange rate used by my bank(First Bank of Nigeria) was 470 per dollar, which is roughly 30 Naira shy of the going rate in the parallel market. That's a huge profit margin for the bank but I didn't bother too much about it because well, the bank has to eat too.