First, I have made it clear that I am against any defense of the nonsensical where a President evoked war against a section of a country because he has problems with those breaking the law. My position has remained: go after anyone doing something illegal, and do not lump Nigerians as a block on criminal matters. It seems the government has understood that, and has effectively changed its argument against Twitter!

This is the new point: any company that needs Nigeria and Nigerians to make money must also pay taxes to Nigeria. In other words, Twitter does not have an office in Nigeria but Nigerians ship money to Twitter for adverts and promos. That has to change. If the government had used this logic to ban Twitter, I would have supported it. I mean if they can get it done on Twitter, Netflix and other media platforms with no corporate presence in Nigeria, we should support it.

There is a reason for that: while you can watch your Netflix shows in Lagos and ship money to its American headquarters, directly or indirectly, that money is not helping your city in any way. The government thinks we can force Netflix and others to pay attention to Nigeria with some taxes.

This new argument is certainly something that will break Twitter as other African nations can rally around it. The rumour that Twitter had reached across to Nigeria could be connected to this “case” because Twitter has all to lose now, if countries see everything from this economic angle.

Minister Lai Mohammed also spoke concerning the payment of tax by tech giants in the country.

He explained that most of the OTT and social media platforms operating in Nigeria do not have offices either do they pay taxes for the billions earned.

Henceforth, the Federal government has resolved to ensure other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram be registered in the country and adverts have been published to this effect.

The information minister, despite criticism by Human Rights groups, insists that freedom of speech has not been stifled as a result of the ban.

He maintained that other social media platforms are still available for use.

For that, Mr. Mohammed had a great day, but he has to get his boss to correct his blown statement nevertheless!

The government of El Salvador has economically baptized Bitcoin, making it a legal tender in the nation.  That brought some cheers to the world of coins because hedge funds, investors and market makers can safely domicile their “wallets” in El Salvador knowing that if anything bad happens in other places, they can recover by exchanging for El Salvador currency.

El Salvador becomes the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, with 62 votes approval out of 84. President Nayib Bukelet welcomes the so-called “Bitcoin law” and described this as a historical moment with a “supermajority”.

President Nayib Bukele announced this adoption on Twitter and said this is a historical moment. The so-called “Bitcoin law” was motioned on early Tuesday. Prior to the adoption, Bukele stated that it would require “every economic agents” to accept Bitcoin (BTC) payments and urge businesses to accept payments in cryptocurrencies

Yet, Bitcoin and cousins have real challenges as competition heats us. China is moving with the e-yuan. And today, the U.S. Senate Banking Subcommittee on Economic Policy plans to hold a hearing titled, “Building A Stronger Financial System: Opportunities of a Central Bank Digital Currency”. If the e-dollar emerges, expect more alternatives to Bitcoin.

But it is not just the US. The nation of Ghana is coming along: “The Bank of Ghana (BoG) is moving towards the introduction of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) experiment. This was announced by the governor of the central bank, Ernest Addison, who was speaking during a news conference in Ghana’s capital, Accra. It was announced at the press conference that the BoG was in the advanced stages of creating a CBDC.” Nigeria has also hinted at a digital currency. Jack Dorsey, Square and Twitter CEO, brought some cheers on the idea of a hard wallet to safely hold coins.

Twitter and Square Inc. Chief Executive Officer, Jack Dorsey, said his digital-payments company, Square Inc., is considering building a Bitcoin hardware wallet, which is an offline cryptocurrency wallet that holds the digital currency but isn’t connected to the internet.

Hardware wallets are considered the safest way to safeguard cryptocurrencies and are used by investors in cryptocurrency who want an extra layer of protection from holding their coins on soft wallets such as web-enabled devices

But Bitcoin or no Bitcoin, America understands that nations rise on its economic competitiveness and wants to plan a playbook against the rise of China: “The Senate passed rare bipartisan legislation on Tuesday aimed at countering China’s growing influence by investing more than $200 billion in American technology, science and research.” Possibly, that bill will help to seed the next generation of coins! That has always been the concerns because if someone comes up with something really better, possibly the current coin will be like those files you could not retrieve from the old floppy diskettes.

But the biggest risk is how these government coins will operate.

Technological change is upending finance. Bitcoin has gone from being an obsession of anarchists to a $1trn asset class that many fund managers insist belongs in any balanced portfolio. Swarms of digital day-traders have become a force on Wall Street. PayPal has 392m users, a sign that America is catching up with China’s digital-payments giants. Yet, as our special report explains, the least noticed disruption on the frontier between technology and finance may end up as the most revolutionary: the creation of government digital currencies, which typically aim to let people deposit funds directly with a central bank, bypassing conventional lenders.

These “govcoins” are a new incarnation of money. They promise to make finance work better but also to shift power from individuals to the state, alter geopolitics and change how capital is allocated. They are to be treated with optimism, and humility.

The state of Ohio in the United States wants to classify Google as a public utility. That means Google will be put in the same bucket like your electricity provider and water board: “Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on Tuesday filed a landmark lawsuit asking the court to declare Google a public utility, reining in the ways the powerful search engine provides search results to the people of the State.”

This comes after France’s competition watchdog fined the web search giant 220 million euros ($268 million) on Monday for abusing its market power in the online advertising industry.

The Attorney General accuses Google of being anticompetitive, forcing Ohioans to use its products in the first of its kind case.

“Google uses its dominance of internet search to steer Ohioans to Google’s own products–that’s discriminatory and anti-competitive,” Yost said. “When you own the railroad or the electric company or the cellphone tower, you have to treat everyone the same and give everybody access.”

There is actually a reason for that: Google has become very powerful. In a Harvard article, I used this line to describe this position: “Apart from those areas, everyone is competing against global ICT utilities like Google and Facebook”. Yes, Google is not just a public utility in Ohio, it is a global one.

Yet, Google is in this powerful position due to innovation. The world should not blindly punish it. What I expect to happen is for them to make Google more responsible. It continues to devalue views for publishers even as it continues to declare record profits. So, what took you 2,000 views in 2019 may require 4,000 views for the same amount of money. And Google does this unaccountable to any person. If those selling building materials, medicines, education programs etc do just that, the world will not be happy. So, Google must be put under control!

As they work to fix Google, let them check Facebook which wants to monetize everything after getting most people to converge on its ecosystem: “Social media site, Facebook, says that some of its free services, including fan subscription, badges and online events, will be monetized by 2023.” 

Facebook’s Chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, made the announcement on Monday, stating that the idea is to help content creators eke a living on the platform.

He also assured that the revenue share will favour content creators compared to what Apple and other social media companies offer.

“To help more creators make a living on our platforms, we’re going to keep paid online events, fan subscriptions, badges, and our upcoming independent news products free for creators until 2023. And when we do introduce a revenue share, it will be less than the 30% that Apple and others take.

Pure and simple, the world needs to find competitors for Google because its best feature, data, will keep it biggest.