By Adedapo Adesanya
The Naira maintained its steep fall against the US Dollar at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) wing of the foreign exchange (FX) market on Friday, June 9, as it lost N3 to sell at N472.50/$1 compared with the previous day’s N469.50/$1.
The weakening of the domestic currency coincides with plans to merge the exchange rate regimes in the country.
Yesterday, the value of forex bought and sold stood at $77.42 million, 4.4 per cent or $3.24 million higher than the $74.18 million recorded in the preceding session.
Also, in the black market, the local currency depreciated against the American currency by N5 to close at N765/$1 compared with the preceding session’s value of N760/$1.
But in the Peer-2-Peer (P2P) window, the Nigerian currency appreciated against its US counterpart by N1 during the session to finish at N769/$1, in contrast to Thursday’s N770/$1.
A look at the interbank window showed that the local currency lost 29 Kobo against the Pound Sterling on Friday to settle at N577.28/£1 versus Thursday’s N576.99/£ and against the Euro, it appreciated by 11 Kobo to end the day at N495.68/€1 versus N495.79/€1.
As for the digital currency market, the news that US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuits against Binance, Binance.US and Coinbase swayed investors to the bears, leading to the exit of $4 billion deposits from the crypto exchange giants.
Consequently, Bitcoin (BTC) slid by 2.6 per cent to $25,815.23, Ethereum (ETH) dropped 2.5 per cent to $1,791.64, Cardano (ADA) plunged by 22.3 per cent to $0.2482, Solana (SOL) recorded a 21.2 per cent slump to trade at $14.78, and Dogecoin (DOGE) declined by 10.4 per cent to $0.0608.
In addition, Litecoin (LTC) depreciated by 10.0 per cent to $79.03, Binance Coin (BNB) went down by 8.5 per cent to $238.12, and Ripple (XRP) lost 4.3 per cent to trade at $0.5023, while Binance USD (BUSD) and the US Dollar Tether (USDT) closed flat at $1.00 apiece.
Dipo Olowookere