Naira Appreciates To N740 Per Dollar At Black Market

The Naira appreciated significantly at the Peer-to-peer and parallel markets on Thursday selling between N740 and N750 per dollar.

Yesterday, the Naira gained N89 against the American currency in the P2P window to trade at N751/$1, in contrast to the preceding session’s N840$1, and in the black market, the local currency appreciated against its US counterpart by N80 to sell at N740/$1 compared with Wednesday’s rate of N820/$1.

However, at the spot market, the Naira depreciated against the US Dollar yesterday by 43 Kobo or 0.1 per cent to close at N446.10/$1 versus the previous day’s N445.67$1, according to data obtained from FMDQ Securities Exchange.

The platform also revealed that the value of forex trades in the I&E segment stood at $89.95 million on Thursday compared with the previous day’s $93.01 million, representing a decline of $3.06 million or 3.3 per cent.

Also, in the interbank window, the local currency depreciated against the Pound Sterling on Thursday by N1.09 to close at N505.71.29/£1 versus Wednesday’s N504.62/£1 and lost N3.11 against the Euro to settle at N443.64/€1 versus N440.53/€1.

The cryptocurrency market, on the other hand, remained in negative territory following the tumultuous stint of one of the major crypto exchange platforms, FTX.

FTX is now the subject of state and federal investigations and has halted withdrawals. While FTX US is supposedly okay, according to its founder, Mr Sam Bankman-Fried, the company announced Thursday that it might halt trading in the coming days and advised its users to halt deposits.

The value of Litecoin (LTC) rose by 14.75 per cent yesterday to $61.97, Solana (SOL) appreciated by 13.07 per cent to $16.99, Ethereum (ETH) saw a 6.7 per cent rise to trade at $1,259.40, Dogecoin (DOGE) went up by 6.2 per cent to sell at $0.0868, and Ripple (XRP) increased by 5.4 per cent to trade at $0.3889.

Further, Binance Coin (BNB) expanded by 5.3 per cent to trade at $296.62, Bitcoin (BTC) improved by 3.9 per cent to $17,251.95, while Cardano (ADA) appreciated by 3.8 per cent to $0.3624, with the US Dollar Tether (USDT) declining by 0.02 per cent to $0.9974, and Binance USD (BUSD) closed flat at $1.00.