Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Naira witnessed the three possible scenarios it could encounter in the foreign exchange (forex) market on Friday as it appreciated against the US Dollar at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) segment, lost at the Peer-2-Peer (P2P) window, and maintained stability at the black market wing of the market.
In the I&E market, the domestic currency was strengthened by 65 Kobo or 0.14 per cent against the greenback yesterday to sell at N462.23/$1, in contrast to the previous day’s value of N462.88/$1, amid an 18.3 per cent or $19.86 million increase in the FX turnover for the trading session to $128.29 million from the $108.43 million executed at the previous trading day.
In the parallel market, the exchange rate of the Nigerian currency to the American currency remained unchanged during the session at N735/$1.
However, in the P2P window, the Naira depreciated against US Dollar by N4 to trade at N750/$1, in contrast to the N746/$1 it was exchanged a day earlier.
Also, at the interbank segment of the market, the value of the domestic currency depleted against the British Pound Sterling on Friday by N3.49 as it traded at N579.82/£1 compared to the previous N576.33/£1, and against the Euro, it depreciated by N1.78 to quote at N510.55/€1, in contrast to Thursday’s N508.77/€1.
Meanwhile, the digital coins tracked by Business Post in the cryptocurrency market yesterday were mostly mixed, with investors jumping on Ethereum (ETH) after its newest memecoins, causing its value to move up by 3.5 per cent to $1,963.90.
Bitcoin (BTC) rose by 0.5 per cent to $29,386.57, Solana (SOL) increased by 3.9 per cent to $22.67, Dogecoin (DOGE) appreciated by 0.4 per cent to $0.0791, and Ripple (XRP) grew by 0.3 per cent to $0.4644.
On the flip side, Litecoin (LTC) took a 0.8 per cent hit to trade at $87.57, Cardano (ADA) lost by 0.3 per cent to sell at $0.3905, and Binance Coin (BNB) shed 0.03 per cent to trade at $325.50, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and Binance USD (BUSD) sold flat at $1.00 each.
The newly created SpongeBob token (SPONGE), which is based on Spongebob Squarepants and launched Thursday, has surged almost 600 per cent since and is trading at less than 1 cent per coin.
This is a source of worry for the market since these are driven by hype and social media, and investors have suffered significant losses from investing in them.
