Assignment for this weekend: no matter your position at work, I challenge you to use this weekend to think about your job security. Freeze that vacation and the big “toy” purchase. And this applies to government workers: you can be months off salaries in Nigeria. It has happened in Abia state where the government allowed some post-secondary schools to run out of cash – and naturally closed. Abia State College Of Education Arochukwu “natural” closure saw the workers losing their jobs! Add General Hospitals, you get the idea. Coronavirus will scale these paralyses and the next 3 months could be extremely challenging: conserve cash and prepare. Our markets are collapsing as NNPC notes.

In a statement in Abuja, Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari, who was speaking at the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Round Table discussion, also warned of serious economic challenges as a result of the falling crude oil price.

He called on government at all levels, captains of Industries and the organized private sectors to brace up for the new low regime of global crude oil prices, while he added that realistic estimates must be made to reflect the current realities of the crude oil market.

Despite the global downturn, Kyari, however, stated that the NNPC was working round the clock to increase the countries daily crude oil output to three million barrels per day and shore up the country’s crude oil reserves to 40 billion barrels.

With Europe feeling the pains of travel bans from godzilla America, you will laugh that even coronavirus can make big boys weep. Imagine someone telling German airlines that we do not want you in the U.S. because you are bringing in restricted cargoes! France, Italy and the rest look small today (they’re not happy). Trump does not care – and you cannot blame him because he took the oath to protect Boston, not Berlin!

“Non-Schengen and UK excepted: this is not about containment, this is about sending a political message. In a time where the EU is challenged to its core, the US is closing its borders and turning its back on allies,” tweeted Benjamin Haddad, director of the Future Europe Initiative at Atlantic Council.

Al Jazeera’s Laurence Lee, reporting from London, said: “The EU is absolutely furious about this, bewildered, and trying to work out what the ramifications are. They weren’t consulted apparently before Trump said this in the middle of the night, European time.

“They are trying to understand what it means. There are enormous concerns about trade between the EU and US.

This time is different: prepare. Whenever the Dow suffers like this – 7% off again today – mainstreets across the world see challenging times.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 2,000 points Thursday morning after President Donald Trump’s long-awaited response to the coronavirus epidemic triggered a massive sell-off on Wall Street.

The S&P 500 plunged by 7 percent, triggering a circuit breaker, which halts all trading on the New York Stock Exchange for 15 minutes.

All three major averages sank after Trump’s Oval Office address Wednesday night failed to satisfy traders who were hoping for more concrete steps to allay any economic slowdown from the viral outbreak.

This is now the worst week for markets since the 2008 financial crisis, with trading halted twice on Thursday morning. The first time came after all three major averages sank below the 5 percent “limit down” marker in premarket activity

In politics, we have polling legends. They are legends because they have figured out mechanisms to understand the voters.Because elections actually do have hard outcomes (yes, who wins), electoral polling is not an easy job. More than 90% of U.S. pollsters, experts in their domains, failed to predict the Presidency of Donald Trump. In practically anything else but election, they would remain correct because there would not have been a way to know the real mindsets of the voters or customers! So, those reports on consumer preferences, consumer trends, etc are all yo-yo because there is no way to know, absolutely! They could be right. But they could be wrong. And there is no clear way to make that call.

That takes me to cryptocurrency. As coronavirus shakes empires and territories, I have expected Bitcoin to rise up to its “promises”. Unfortunately, Bitcoin at the moment is under serious virus attack. Yes, the value of Bitcoin is falling just as stock markets are crashing.

The promise was this: Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies would be uncorrelated to main asset classes like stocks. So, in the days when stocks are falling, Bitcoin would be expected to hold firm, and that means NOT fail in value. As I write, Bitcoin has been falling just as stocks and with the partial disconnection of the U.S. from Europe (minus UK), announced by Trump last night, I expect Bitcoin to be under higher gravity.

The summary is this: people were unfair to Bitcoin by overselling this technology. As a means of exchange, Bitcoin and other cryptos have real values, but as a means to store value, I doubt. Under coronavirus, markets have validated that Bitcoin cannot store your value because Bitcoin is a source of liquidity and cannot be uncorrelated to main markets during crises. If your margin position in a stock is off, you can sell Bitcoin to cover the position and be at parity. Simply, Bitcoin becomes a liquid asset. Provided Bitcoin has that liquidity, its trajectory cannot be uncorrelated with main markets.

All Together

If we just decide to focus on the mission Bitcoin was originally created, as a means of exchange, not as an investment asset, the technology has a great promise. That is why I am all in for a stablecoin for Nigerian naira under the full control of Nigerians, pegged to the real naira, running a native blockchain with APIs to boost the sector by giving access to companies and startups to do trade and commerce in a transparent ecosystem.