The ongoing Naira depreciation which resulted in the ban of the services of Crypto trading platforms in Nigeria escalated today with the reported arrest and detention of two officials of Binance, a global crypto trading firm
The Financial Times of London is reporting that two officials of Binance, were arrested in Nigeria and their traveling passports seized by the Nigerian Authorities.
The identities of the affected Binance officials have not been made known. It is unclear what they were in the country for but speculations have circled around the allegations by the Central Bank of Nigeria, that the crypto platforms were playing a major role in the depreciation of the Nigerian Naira.
Yemi Cardoso, the Governor of the Central Bank had earlier in the week announced that over $26 billion had been traded by Nigerians via the crypto platforms. He alleged that such demand for the United Stated Dollars was contributing to the fall in the value of the Naira.
Cardoso is quoted as saying that the flows were illicit and from unidentifiable sources.
“We are concerned that certain practices go on that indicate illicit flows going through a number of these entities and suspicious flows at best.
“In the case of Binance, in the last one year alone, $26 billion has passed through Binance Nigeria from sources and users who we cannot adequately identify”
Subsequently, trading especially using the P2P option of the crypto platforms was banned in Nigeria.
Some of the other popular platforms banned alongside Binance include, Forextime, OctaFX, Crypto, FXTM, Coinbase and Kraken.
Binance is one of the largest crypto trading platforms in the world and is especially popular in Nigeria, where it is used by traders to circumvent restrictions on crypto trading which was initially put in place by the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele.
The Nigerian Naira has suffered its worst drop in value trading for as low as N1,900 to the Dollar last week. However, after the new tactics deployed by the Central Bank, the Naira had started appreciating this week, trading for about N1450 to the Dollar.
