Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigerian Naira weakened by 17.9 per cent or N144.49 against the American Dollar in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM) on Wednesday, December 6 as confidence waned in the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) ability to boost the market with enough foreign exchange (FX).
Yesterday, the exchange rate of the Naira to the Dollar closed at N951.22/$1 in the official market compared with the preceding session’s rate of N806.73/$1.
This happened as the forex turnover slightly went down by 4.9 per cent or $7.05 million to $135.58 million from the $142.63 million reported in the preceding trading session.
Also, in the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) window of the market, the local currency depreciated against the American currency in the midweek session by N5 to close at N1,167/$1 versus Tuesday’s closing value of N1,162/$1.
Similarly, the Nigerian currency lost N2 against the greenback in the black market during the trading day to sell for N1,172/$1, in contrast to the preceding day’s rate of N1,170/$1.
However, in the spot market, the Naira ended in a stalemate against the Pound Sterling and the Euro yesterday at N1,203.50/£1 and N1,031.30/€1, respectively.
In the cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin (BTC) surged by 4.6 per cent on Wednesday to $43,639.29 as traders scrambled to buy the token in anticipation that its value would rally further. Data showed that investors have pumped more than $1.44 billion into Bitcoin investment products in the past ten weeks.
The expectation is that the approval of a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) will attract huge investments.
Further, Dogecoin (DOGE) grew by 10.9 per cent to sell at $0.0996, Solana (SOL) jumped by 5.6 per cent to $63.45, Cardano (ADA) added 4.5 per cent to trade at $0.4216, Ethereum (ETH) increased by 1.8 per cent to $2,270.93, and Litecoin (LTC) went up by 0.6 per cent to $72.99.
However, Binance Coin (BNB) dropped 0.6 per cent to $230.42, and Ripple (XRP) recorded a 0.3 per cent fall to trade at $0.6171, while the US Dollar Tether (USDt) and US Dollar Coin (USDC) traded at flat $1.00 each.
