Naira Now N1,617/$1 at Official Market, N1,615/$1 at Parallel Market

By Adedapo Adesanya

The exchange rate of the Naira to the Dollar in the official market, which is known as the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM), and the parallel market is almost at par with each other after steps taken by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), including kicking out a well-known cryptocurrency exchange platform, Binance, from the system.

On Monday, March 11, the domestic currency traded against the greenback in the spot market at N1,617.96/$1 compared with last Friday’s rate of N1,627.40/$1, indicating an appreciation of 0.6 per cent or N9.44.

However, the Nigerian currency depreciated against the Pound Sterling at NAFEM yesterday by N54.89 to trade at N2,091.02/£1 versus last Friday’s value of N2,036.13/£1 and against the Euro, it lost N39.09 to finish at N1,779.47/€1, in contrast to the preceding session’s N1,740.38/€1.

The value of FX trades yesterday was quite low, $96.13 million, compared with the $269.35 million achieved in the last trading day, indicating a decline of $173.22 million or 64.3 per cent.

In the black market, the local currency put up a better performance on Monday as it improved by N8 to quote at N1,615/$1 compared with the previous trading session’s N1,623/$1.

In the cryptocurrency market, momentum surged as Bitcoin (BTC) jumped to an all-time high of $72,000 as it rose by 5.2 per cent to $72,212.48.

But the biggest surge yesterday came from Ripple (XRP), 19.5 per cent, closing at $0.7238. XRP’s rally could be a sign of traders turning their attention and rotating some of their capital to tokens that haven’t moved yet as the rally on digital asset markets broadens.

Further, Litecoin (LTC) went up by 19.4 per cent to trade at $103.58, Cardano (ADA) jumped by 9.9 per cent to $0.7813, Dogecoin (DOGE) appreciated by 6.4 per cent to $0.1793, Ethereum (ETH) grew by 5.7 per cent to $4,073.10, and Solana (SOL) rose by 3.7 per cent to $148.67.

However, Binance Coin (BNB) slumped by 0.6 per cent to sell for $521.66, while the US Dollar Coin (USDC) traded flat at $0.9995, as the US Dollar Tether (USDT) remained unchanged at $1.00.