By Adedapo Adesanya
The Naira closed the last trading day of the week stronger on the US Dollar at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) window segment of the foreign exchange (forex) market but depreciated in the Peer-2-Peer (P2P) and parallel market.
It was the first trading session in September and the local currency gained 2.93 per cent or N22.33 on the greenback to settle at N740.38/$1, in contrast to the previous day’s N762.71/$1.
The currency was strengthened despite coming under FX demand pressure because of the sufficient supply in the market.
The turnover for the day was $178.53 million, 77.4 per cent or $92.74 million higher than the $85.79 million achieved in the preceding trading session.
However, in the P2P market, the Naira lost N3 against the Dollar to sell at N921/$1 compared with the previous day’s N918/$1, and in the black market, it depreciated by N1 to sell at N921/$1.
But in the spot market, the Nigerian Naira appreciated against the British Pound Sterling by N24.58 to close at N935.35/£1 versus Thursday’s closing price of N959.93/£1 and against the Euro, it improved by N20.23 to sell at N801.38/€1 versus the previous day’s N821.61/€1.
As for the digital currency market, it traded mixed as the effect from a US federal court dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against UniSwap waned.
The SEC had alleged that UniSwap violated US federal securities laws by facilitating the trading of unregistered securities, such as tokens issued by initial coin offerings (ICOs) and decentralized finance (DeFi) projects. The SEC also claimed that Uniswap’s governance token, UNI, was itself a security that should have been registered with the agency.
However, the court ruled that the SEC failed to prove that UniSwap or UNI met the criteria of the Howey test, which is used to determine whether an asset is a security or not.
At the market yesterday, Bitcoin (BTC) slid by 0.8 per cent to sell at $25,784.80, Ethereum (ETH) depreciated by 0.9 per cent to $1,630.33, Ripple (XRP) recorded a 1.9 per cent fall to trade at $0.4959, Solana (SOL) slumped by 1.7 per cent to $19.47, Cardano (ADA) dipped by 0.5 per cent to trade at $0.2556, Litecoin (LTC) fell by 0.5 per cent to $63.28, and Dogecoin (DOGE) recorded a 0.07 per cent depreciation to trade at $0.0635.
On the other hand, Binance USD (BUSD) rose by 0.07 per cent to $1.00, Binance Coin (BNB) recorded a 0.02 per cent rise to sell at $214.25, and the US Dollar Tether (USDT) improved by 0.02 per cent to $0.9999.