Naira Trades Flat at Official Market as FX Matching System Commences

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Naira traded flat against the Dollar at N1,672.69/$1 in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEX) on Monday, December 2, when the first foreign exchange (FX) trading day held on the Electronic Foreign Exchange Matching System (EFEMS) via the Bloomberg BMatch System.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) issued a directive last week mandating all banks in the interbank foreign exchange market to move to the Bloomberg BMatch system for FX trading.

The implementation, which went live on Monday, is designed to boost the operational efficiency and transparency of the nation’s FX market.

Equally, the Naira closed flat against the Pound Sterling and the Euro in the spot market yesterday to wrap the session at N2,111.48/£1 and  N1,757.57/€1, respectively.

In the parallel market, the Nigerian Naira appreciated against the US Dollar during the session by N5 to settle at N1,730/$1, in contrast to the preceding day’s N1,735/$1.

In the cryptocurrency market, Ripple (XRP) continued on a tear as Bitcoin (BTC) struggles to approach $100,000 amid talk of a large “sell wall” near the six-digit price mark.

XRP, the payments-focused cryptocurrency, has skyrocketed 375 per cent in the last 30 days, replacing the leading dollar-pegged stablecoin, Tether’s USDT, as the world’s third-largest digital asset.

Market analysts say the possibility of an XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) is contributing to the rise.

Generally, since Donald Trump’s victory in the US election held on November 5, the crypto price surge has sparked a strong belief among traders that this upward trend will continue unabated.

XRP recorded a 14.6 per cent appreciation to settle at $2.73, Cardano (ADA) rose by 14.4 per cent to trade at $1.30, Litecoin (LTC) went up by 9.2 per cent to $132.09, Binance Coin (BNB) added 1.8 per cent to close at $659.24, and  Solana (SOL) gained 1.0 per cent to quote at $229.25.

On the flip side, Dogecoin (DOGE) slumped by 2.3 per cent to sell at $0.4241, Ethereum (ETH) slid by 0.4 per cent to $3,333.84, and BTC waned by 0.2 per cent to $96,219.70, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and the US Dollar Coin (USDC) traded flat at $1.00 apiece.