Dollar Crashes Against Naira at Black Market to N740/$1

By Adedapo Adesanya

The decision of President Bola Tinubu to merge all the exchange rate channels into one seems to be working wonders in the black market as the Naira significantly appreciated against the Dollar on Wednesday.

Business Post reports that the Nigerian Naira gained N19 or 2.50 per cent against the US Dollar during the session to sell for N740/$1, in contrast to Tuesday’s exchange rate of N759/$1, as the hard currency begins to flow into the market over fears that the local currency would firm up.

It was a similar situation in the Peer-2-Peer (P2P) window of the foreign exchange (FX) market yesterday as the domestic currency appreciated against its American counterpart by N4 to quote at N764/$1 compared with the previous day’s value of N768/$1.

However, this feat could not be replicated in the Investors and Exporters (I&E) arm of the market, as the local currency lost 17 Kobo or 0.04 per cent against the greenback to trade at N464.67/$1 versus N464.50/$1, amid a 13.1 per cent or $19.02 million rise in the value of forex trades in the spot market.

The turnover for the trading session stood at $163.74 million as against the $144.72 million recorded in the preceding session.

Equally, the local currency depreciated against the Pound Sterling in the interbank segment of the forex market on Wednesday by N2.64 to close at N574.37/£1 versus Tuesday’s N571.73/£1 and lost 52 Kobo against the Euro to settle at N495.89/€1 versus N496.41/€1.

As for the digital currency market, the bears took control as most of the tokens monitored by Business Post ended in the danger zone, with Bitcoin (BTC) losing 2.1 per cent to close at $27,150.29.

Ethereum (ETH) slid by 1.4 per cent to $1,876.67, Solana (SOL) slumped by 1.9 per cent to $20.80, Litecoin (LTC) shed 1.8 per cent to sell for $90.67, Ripple (XRP) declined by 1.7 per cent to $0.5095, Binance Coin (BNB) went south by 1.6 per cent to $306.61, Cardano (ADA) dropped 1.5 per cent to close at $0.3732, and Dogecoin (DOGE) shrank by 1.1 per cent to $0.0717, while Binance USD (BUSD) and the US Dollar Tether (USDT) closed flat at $1.00 apiece.