By Adedapo Adesanya
The Naira gained 30 kobo or 0.07 per cent against the American currency at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) segment of the foreign exchange (forex) market on Thursday, November 18.
At the specialised market, the domestic currency was traded at N414.80/$1 in contrast to the N415.10/$1 it was traded at the preceding session, where it closed flat for the fourth trading day.
The strengthening of the Nigerian currency occurred in the midst of a decline in the FX turnover at the market window by 69.8 per cent or $208.7 million as trades worth $90.18 million were executed compared with the $298.88 million carried out at the midweek session.
However, at the interbank window, the local currency depreciated against the UD Dollar on Thursday by 2 kobo to close at N411.59/$1 compared with the previous day’s N411.57/$1.
Also, against the Pound Sterling, the domestic currency depreciated by N1.59 yesterday to trade at N554.14/£1 versus N552.55/£1 it was traded a day earlier but it appreciated by N4.90 against the Euro to sell for N466.19/€1 in contrast to Wednesday’s closing price of N471.09/€1.
At the digital currency market, the bears have refused to back down as nine of the 10 tokens tracked by Business Post recorded losses on Thursday.
The market is reacting to moves to surveil cryptocurrency transactions in the infrastructure package American President Joe Biden signed into law on Monday.
The law will require crypto brokers to track and report transactions to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in an effort to give tax authorities more visibility into virtual currency trades.
This development further dragged down Litecoin (LTC) by 12.2 per cent to N114,000.01 and weakened Tron (TRX) by 6.8 per cent to settle at N57.80.
Dash (DASH) lost 6.7 per cent to trade at N99,352.35, Bitcoin (BTC) depreciated by 6.1 per cent to N31,159,542.80, Ripple (XRP) fell by 4.1 per cent to N585.06, Dogecoin (DOGE) declined by 1.9 per cent to sell at N135.77, Cardano (ADA) went south by 1.4 per cent to trade at N1,045.28, Ethereum (ETH) dropped 1.0 per cent to sell at N2,210,000.00, while Binance Coin (BNB) lost 0.7 per cent to trade at N218,979.33.
However, the US Dollar Tether (USDT) appreciated by 0.9 per cent to sell for N553.99.
Modupe Gbadeyanka