By Adedapo Adesanya
It was a weak start for the Nigerian Naira against the US Dollar in the foreign exchange market on Monday, September 11, as forex demand pressure returned amid illiquidity of funds despite recent moves by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
In the Investors and Exporters (I&E) arm of the FX market, the Naira depreciated against the Dollar by 7.1 per cent or N37.88 to sell at N773.50/$1 compared with the preceding session’s N736.62/$1.
The weakening of the local currency at the official market was aggravated by a shortage in forex supply as traders were unable to meet the demand for the foreign currency, leading to a turnover of $37.86 million, 75.3 per cent or $115.69 million lower than the $153.55 million posted last Friday.
Also, in the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) window, the Nigerian currency fell against the greenback yesterday by N8 to quote at N941/$1, in contrast to the previous trading day’s rate of N933/$1.
Similarly, the value of the domestic currency weakened against its American counterpart in the parallel market on Monday by N3 to close at N932/$1 versus last Friday’s value of N929/$1.
It was not different with the Pound Sterling as the Naira lost N10.80 in the spot market to finish at N967.55/£1 compared with the previous session’s N956.75/£1 and against the Euro, it shed N26.33 million to trade at N829.48/€1 versus N803.15/€1.
A look at the digital currency market showed that the bears took control after coming under pressure due to news that the collapsed FTX crypto exchange may soon liquidate its $3.4 billion in crypto holdings.
Bitcoin (BTC) lost 0.4 per cent to close at $25,760.64, Ethereum (ETH) slid by 2.2 per cent to $1,579.59, Ripple (XRP) went down by 3.9 per cent to trade at $0.4748, Litecoin (LTC) shrank by 3.0 per cent to $59.64, Solana (SOL) dropped 2.1 per cent to sell at $17.95, and Binance Coin (BNB) went south by 1.4 per cent to $209.12.
Further, Cardano (ADA) slumped by 1.0 per cent to $0.2456, Dogecoin (DOGE) weakened by 0.3 per cent to sell at $0.0612, the US Dollar Tether (USDT) crumbled by 0.01 per cent to $0.9999, and Binance USD (BUSD) remained flat at $0.9996.
