Naira Falls to N854.61/$1 at NAFEM as Solana Surges

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Nigerian Naira weakened on the American Dollar in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM) on Wednesday, December 20 by 1.2 per cent or N9.76.

In the last two sessions, the exchange rate had strengthened but yesterday, it failed to extend this run to a third day, closing at N854.61/$1 compared with the preceding session’s N844.85/$1.

This happened as the market saw a turnover of $181.30 million compared with the $111.76 million recorded in the preceding trading session, implying a decline of 62.2 per cent or $69.54 million, according to data from the FMDQ Securities Exchange.

Similarly, the Naira depreciated against the Pound Sterling in the official market by N72.63 to settle at N1,156.72/£1 compared with the previous day’s N1,084.09/£1 and against the Euro, it weakened by N6054 to quote at N995.97/€1 compared with the preceding session’s N935.43/€1.

However, the Naira maintained its winning ways in the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) window of the foreign exchange (forex) market as it gained N17 against the US Dollar yesterday to trade at N1,165/$1 compared with Tuesday’s closing price of N1,182/$1.

In the same vein, the local currency improved its value against the American currency by N40 in the midweek session to close at N1,190/$1, in contrast to the previous trading day’s N1,230/$1.

In the cryptocurrency market, Solana (SOL) overtook Ripple (XRP) as the fifth-largest cryptocurrency, with its market cap hitting a 20-month high of $33.7 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. It topped $1 billion for the first since FTX’s collapse in November last year, spurred by rising asset prices and consistent inflows to DeFi protocols.

Having fended off a wave of selling pressure from holdings in the FTX bankruptcy estate, the token’s recent growth has been outlined by a rise in the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem coupled with hype-fueled meme coin mania.

The coin surged by 12.2 per cent to trade at $82.79, Bitcoin (BTC) rose by 2.8 per cent to $43,594.34, XRP gained 1.5 per cent to sell at $0.6143, and Binance Coin (BNB) appreciated by 1.4 per cent to $257.54.

Further, Cardano (ADA) added 1.2 per cent to trade at $0.5867, Dogecoin (DOGE) made a 0.8 per cent appreciation to sell at $0.0915, Ethereum (ETH) rose by 0.4 per cent to $2,192.77, while Litecoin (LTC) dropped 2.1 per cent to trade at $69.46, with the US Dollar Tether (USDt) and US Dollar Coin (USDC) remaining unchanged at $1.00 each.