By Adedapo Adesanya
The Naira depreciated by 0.12 per cent or 50 kobo against the Dollar on Friday, April 29 at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) segment of the foreign exchange (FX) market as investors exchanged their local currency at N419.00/$1 in contrast to the N418.50/$1 of the preceding session.
Foreign currency sellers struggled during the session to meet the demand of forex by their customers as they prepare for a long holiday. The federal government declared next Monday and Tuesday as public work-free days to mark Workers’ Day and Eid el-Fitri.
The demand for FX by users put pressure on the local currency, causing it to weaken yesterday.
It was not a different story at the spot market for the Naira against the Pound Sterling as it declined by N5.03 to sell for N522.11/£1 compared with the previously traded rate of N517.08/£1 and against the Euro, it fell by N2.14 to close at N438.43/€1 versus Thursday’s exchange rate of N436.29/€1.
However, at the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) segment of the FX market, the domestic currency traded flat against the greenback yesterday at N586/$1.
At the digital currency market, transactions were bearish as all the 10 benchmarked tokens tracked by Business Post closed lower, with Dash (DASH) depreciating by 6.1 per cent to sell for N54,013.31.
Cardano (ADA) recorded a 5.1 per cent depreciation to close at N466.87, Ripple (XRP) also went down by 5.1 per cent to trade at N367.11, Solana (SOL) depreciated by 4.3 per cent to N57,665.65, Ethereum (ETH) fell by 4.3 per cent to sell at N1,688,837.01, while Bitcoin (BTC) retreated by 3.3 per cent to sell for N23,818,500.00.
Further, Binance Coin (BNB) also recorded a 3.3 per cent fall to trade at N236,138.90, Litecoin (LTC) dropped 3.2 per cent to quote at N67,335.00, Dogecoin (DOGE) slumped by 0.7 per cent to N83.45, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) declined by 0.1 per cent to N600.47.
Modupe Gbadeyanka