Naira Crashes to N960/$1 at Black Market, N968/$1 at P2P

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Nigerian Naira weakened against the United States Dollar on Friday by N5 at the black market, selling at N960/$1 compared with the N955/$1 it was transacted in the preceding trading session.

The shortage in the supply of forex into the market contributed to the loss suffered by the local currency during the trading session.

This also affected the domestic currency in the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) window of the foreign exchange (FX) market on Friday, as it lost N5 against the greenback to sell at N968/$1, in contrast to Thursday’s exchange rate of N963/$1.

However, the Nigerian currency performed better than the US Dollar in the Investors and Exporters (I&E) segment of the market during the trading day as it was strengthened by 2.96 per cent or N23.09 to close at N756.91/$1 versus the preceding day’s N780.00/$1.

This happened as the forex turnover went down by $23.86 million or 34.2 per cent to $45.88 million from the $69.74 million recorded in the preceding session.

At the spot market, the domestic local currency was flat against the Pound Sterling and Euro yesterday at N954.77/£1 and N820.01/€1 apiece.

Meanwhile, the digital currency market was bullish on Friday, as Bitcoin (BTC) appreciated by 0.3 per cent to $26,501.36, Ethereum (ETH) gained 0.5 per cent to settle at $1,636.55, Litecoin (LTC) rose by 4.2 per cent to $65.71, Binance Coin (BNB) improved by 1.2 per cent to trade at $214.79, and Ripple (XRP) climbed by 0.7 per cent to $0.4993.

Further, Dogecoin (DOGE) went up by 0.5 per cent to $0.0623, Solana (SOL) recorded a 0.3 per cent jump to trade at $19.12, while Cardano (ADA) went down by 0.3 per cent to $0.2507, and Binance USD (BUSD) and the US Dollar Tether (USDT) closed flat at $1.00.