By Adedapo Adesanya
Fresh devaluation fears were sparked on Thursday at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) window of the foreign exchange (forex) market following the heavy loss the Naira recorded against the US Dollar during the session.
Data from the FMDQ Securities Exchange showed that the local currency depreciated by N20 or 4.82 per cent yesterday to trade at N435/$1 compared with the preceding day’s N415/$1.
This decline happened amid an increase in the day’s turnover by $107.81 million or 90.2 per cent as the value of transactions was $227.29 million in contrast to the previous day’s $119.48 million.
At the interbank segment of the market, the domestic currency also recorded a heavy loss against the greenback on Thursday, going down by 75 kobo to close at N412.70/$1 compared with N411.95/$1 it closed at the previous day.
At the same FX window, the Nigerian currency depreciated against the Pound Sterling by N4.23 to trade at N556.98/£1 in contrast to the previous session’s N552.75/£1.
Also, against the Euro, the Naira depreciated by 72 kobo to quote at N467.54/€1 compared with N466.82/€1 it was traded at the midweek session.
Meanwhile, investment in the cryptocurrencies market was mostly bullish as six of the 10 cryptos tracked recovered from recent jitters felt by the market brought on by concerns relating to environmental, social and governance factors.
Bitcoin (BTC) recorded a 2.4 per cent appreciation to sell at N26,898,854.18, Dash (DASH) gained 2.2 per cent to close at N76,935.94, Cardano (ADA) grew by 2.0 per cent to N765.63, the US Dollar Tether (USDT) moved upwards by 1.6 per cent to sell for N574.37, Dogecoin (DOGE) went up by 0.7 per cent to sell at N98.33, while Binance Coin (BNB) made a 0.2 per cent gain to trade at N211,411.77.
But Ethereum (ETH) dropped 3.4 per cent to sell at N2,072,500.02, Ripple (XRP) slid 1.3 per cent to trade at N468.71, Tron (TRX) lost 0.4 per cent to trade at N44.49, while Litecoin (LTC) saw a 0.1 per cent depreciation to trade at N83,854.05.
