By Adedapo Adesanya
The Naira further weakened against the US Dollar across the major sectors of the foreign exchange (FX) market on Thursday as the country continues to suffer from low forex earnings despite the prices of crude oil going higher at the global market.
In the Investors and Exporters (I&E) arm of the forex market yesterday, the Nigerian currency lost 2.9 per cent or N21.28 against the greenback to sell at N780.00/$1 compared with the previous day’s N758.12/$1.
The low FX supply to the spot market took its toll on the local currency as the value of trades surged by 31.9 per cent or $16.87 million to $69.74 million from the previous session’s $52.87 million.
In the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) window, the domestic currency depreciated against the United States currency during the trading day by N9 to trade at N963/$1 versus Wednesday’s value of N954/$1.
In the same vein, the Naira lost N5 against its American counterpart on Thursday to close at N955/$1, in contrast to the midweek session’s rate of N950/$1.
However, it was a different outcome for the Naira at the official market yesterday against the Pound Sterling as it gained N9.95 to finish at N954.77/£1 compared with the previously traded rate of N964.72/£1 and against the Euro, it improved by N7.10 to end at N820.11/€1 versus N827.11/€1.
In the cryptocurrency market, the prices of tokens further improved on Thursday as traders welcomed the latest report from the US, which revealed that inflation surged to 3.7 per cent on a year-over-year basis, surpassing economist predictions of 3.6 per cent.
Bitcoin (BTC) jumped by 1.4 per cent to end at $26,581.87, Ethereum (ETH) rose by 0.9 per cent to $1,630.13, Ripple (XRP) recorded a 3.9 per cent appreciation to trade at $0.501, Solana (SOL) increased by 2.7 per cent to $19.19, and Cardano (ADA) added 2.4 per cent to trade at $0.253.
Further, Litecoin (LTC) went up by 2.0 per cent to $63.37, Dogecoin (DOGE) moved up by 1.5 per cent to sell at $0.0621, Binance Coin (BNB) went up by 0.6 per cent to $212.70, while Binance USD (BUSD) and the US Dollar Tether (USDT) traded flat at $1.00 each.
Modupe Gbadeyanka