By Adedapo Adesanya
Pressure mounted on the Naira at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) window of the foreign exchange (FX) market on Friday.
This weakened the domestic currency against the United States Dollar at the market segment by 55 kobo or 0.13 per cent.
Business Post reports that the value of the local currency depreciated to N411.25/$1 in contrast to N410.70/$1 it traded on Thursday.
According to data from FMDQ Securities Exchange, the demand for forex increased yesterday by 128.2 per cent or $78.23 million as transactions worth $139.23 million were executed compared with the $61.0 million achieved at the preceding session.
The inability of forex traders to meet the demands of their customers contributed to the decline the Nigerian currency suffered at the trading session.
But at the interbank segment of the market, the Naira maintained its previous rate against the American currency by closing at N410.16/$1 on Friday.
Equally, at the unregulated segment of the market, the local currency traded flat against the trio of the US Dollar, the Pound Sterling and the Euro.
Against the greenback, the Naira closed the week at N503/$1. It traded at N710/£1 against the British currency and was sold against the Euro at N595/€1.
Meanwhile, at the cryptocurrency market, the bears maintained their dominance as five of the seven digital coins tracked by this newspaper on Quidax, a platform for trading and tracking real-time transactions, closed in red.
The heaviest loss was recorded by Ethereum (ETH), which went down by 4.3 per cent to trade at N1,058,346.00, Dash (DASH) depreciated by 3.6 per cent to sell at N72,194.00, Tron (TRX) lost 1.8 per cent to trade at N32.28, Bitcoin (BTC) declined by 0.1 per cent to sell at N17,700,242.50, while Ripple (XRP) dropped 0.1 per cent to quote at N321.01.
On the bullish side, Litecoin (LTC) made a 3.6 per cent growth to sell at 74,609.00, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) moved up by 0.1 per cent to sell for N516.34 at the session.
Dipo Olowookere