By Adedapo Adesanya
All is not well with the Nigerian currency in the various segments of the foreign exchange (FX) market as its value against the major foreign currencies is depreciating by the day.
On Monday, the Naira lost 0.31 per cent or N1.31 against the United States Dollar at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) window of the forex market as it closed at N420.33/$1 compared with the preceding session’s N419.02/$1.
The decline in the value of the nation’s legal tender occurred amid a shortage of FX supply to traders and according to data obtained from the FMDQ Securities Exchange, the turnover for the trading session was $75.25 million.
Also, at the interbank segment, the domestic currency depreciated against the British Pound Sterling by N4.20 to trade at N522.84/£1 compared to the previously traded rate of N518.64/£1 and against the Euro, the Naira fell by N3.72 to sell at N442.95/€1 in contrast to last Friday’s exchange rate of N439.23/€1.
In the same vein, the Naira lost N2 or 0.32 per cent against the greenback at the Peer-2-Peer (P2P) segment yesterday to finish at N618/$1 in contrast to the previous session’s N616/$1.
Meanwhile, cryptocurrency investors counted more losses on Monday as eight of the 10 digital assets tracked by Business Post were in the negative territory.
Solana (SOL) went down by 4.4 per cent to sell at $49.70, Cardano (ADA) declined by 3.6 per cent to trade at $0.5174, TerraUSD (UST) dropped by 2.9 per cent to quote at $0.0672, while Bitcoin (BTC) recorded a 2.8 per cent loss to finish at $29,263.84.
Further, Ethereum (ETH) retreated by 1.9 per cent to trade at $1,985.53, Ripple (XRP) also depreciated by 1.9 per cent to close at $0.4109, Dogecoin (DOGE) recorded a 1.7 per cent loss to end at $0.0841, while Litecoin (LTC) crashed by 1.6 per cent to sell at $69.81.
However, Binance Coin (BNB) rose by 2.1 per cent to $324.54, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) appreciated by 0.01 per cent to settle at $0.999.