Osamagbe Imadiyi
Nigerians bemoaned their losses on social media after a digital asset trading platform called CBEX allegedly embezzled more than N1.3 trillion from investors’ accounts on Monday. This comes after the money in investors’ wallets disappeared, causing CBEX, which was operating without the Nigeria Securities Commission’s legal approval, to crash on Monday. Additionally, the digital platform delayed withdrawals and locked its Telegram channels, but it gave investors the choice to pay $2,000 for $200 verification and $1,000 for $100 verification.
People in Nigeria have condemned the development on X. Taiwo Owolabi, a security analyst and cryptocurrency expert, explained the CBEX crash by stating that the total amount of investor funds that have been stolen in USDT to date is $847 million and is probably going to rise. With a 100% return on investment promised by a digital platform that is not SEC-registered, Owolabi questioned why Nigerians would spend their money there.
“They created the unreliable website to persuade users that they were impacted by a security breach in the future. They move the money from that TRX wallet, collect it, convert it to USDT, and then convert it to ETH right away after you pay them into a TRX account, it seems. As a result, your profile has absolutely no money when you log in to your account. What you are seeing are merely figures. Your daily “trading” activities all add to your wealth. The AI trading is all fraudulent. They will send you someone else’s money when it is time to withdraw it,” Owolabi clarified on an X space.
The SEC recently cautioned Nigerians against using unregistered trading platforms, which led to the development. Specifically, the SEC noted that it is now illegal for any organization to run an online forex trading platform or offer associated services without first registering with the commission under the recently signed ISA 2025 by President Bola Tinubu.
