Naira Falls at I&E, Expected Adoption Drives Cryptos Higher

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Naira opened the first trading session of the week on a negative note at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) category of the foreign exchange (forex) market on Monday, February.

At the last trading session of the second month of 2022, the value of the Naira to the United States Dollar depreciated by 67 kobo or 0.16 per cent to settle at N416.67/$1 versus N416.00/$1 it was traded last Friday.

This happened amid a decline in the value of FX transactions at the special foreign currency exchange market, according to data obtained from FMDQ Securities Exchange.

The turnover for the trading day was $80.32 million, 40.2 per cent or $54.07 million lower than the $134.39 million achieved at the preceding session.

It was observed that at the spot market, the exchange rate of the local currency to the Pound Sterling depreciated by 64 kobo to trade at N558.23/£1 compared with the previously traded rate of N557.59/£1 and against the Euro, the Naira lost N1.35 to sell for N466.37/€1 in contrast to the previous N465.02/€1.

Meanwhile, at the Peer-2-Peer (P2P) window, the Nigerian Naira closed flat against the United States currency on Monday at N575/$1 despite the cryptocurrency market witnessing a surge.

Cryptos rose yesterday as investors see a future for mass adoption of digital currencies as the Russian-Ukraine assault continued with donations, showing that this could see integration.

As at the time of filing this report, all the 10 tokens tracked by Business Post across several trading platforms recorded gains with Bitcoin (BTC) posting a 13.4 per cent appreciation to sell for N24,411,450.99 and Ethereum (ETH) rising by 10.9 per cent to sell at N1,698,551.68.

Dash (DASH) recorded a 13.8 per cent appreciation to quote at N57,926.28, Solana (SOL) made an 11.4 per cent top-up to sell at N56,957.29, Cardano (ADA) made an 8.9 per cent rise to sell at N564.06, while Litecoin (LTC) added 8.8 per cent to its value to finish at N65,909.64.

In addition, Binance Coin (BNB) gained 7.9 per cent to trade at N163,385.57, Dogecoin (DOGE) grew by 7.1 per cent to settle at N77.54, Ripple (XRP) also improved by 7.1 per cent to trade at N491.45, while the United States Dollar Tether moved up by 0.1 per cent to trade at N581.17.