Major international cryptocurrency exchange Binance has announced that it is leaving the Nigerian market and will no longer be offering any services in the country’s fiat currency, the Nigerian naira (NGN).
The platform will stop accepting NGN withdrawals after March 8, according to a formal announcement made by Binance on March 5. The notification stated that starting on March 8, customers’ remaining NGN funds in their Binance accounts will be automatically converted to the Tether USDT stablecoin.
Before these NGN services are discontinued, the exchange has advised consumers to take their NGN, swap their NGN assets, or convert their NGN into cryptocurrency.
The release further stated, “Please be aware that the conversion rate is determined using the average closing price of the USDT/NGN trading pair on Binance Spot over the previous seven days.”
Additionally, Binance will stop accepting NGN deposits right away because they won’t be supported after 2:00 PM UTC on March 5.
As per the notification, all trading pairs containing NGN will be eliminated from Binance on March 7. On March 6, NGN will also be removed from the list of accepted payment methods by Binance’s payment service, Binance Pay.
Furthermore disclosed by Binance was the fact that all NGN trade pairs were removed from the peer-to-peer platform in late February.
The announcement that Binance has fully removed the Nigerian naira coincides with the firm coming under intense regulatory scrutiny in Nigeria.
The governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria made an argument on February 27 that cryptocurrency exchanges operating in Nigeria were maybe involved in illegal activities. The governor also mentioned “suspicious flows” of monies at Binance.
The passports of two executives from Binance were purportedly seized by Nigeria’s National Security Advisor in Abuja, the country’s capital. The executives’ passports, which are valid in both the US and the UK, were purportedly seized by the authorities as well.
The Nigerian House of Representatives Committee on Financial Crimes has invited Binance CEO Richard Teng to testify before the committee over the matter, as concerns about Binance’spurportedly illegal operations in Nigeria have grown. Local reports claim that the chair of the committee gave the Binancemanagement a deadline to appear before the committee by March 4 at the latest.
In recent years, Nigeria has become one of the crypto economies with the quickest rate of growth worldwide.
According to a prominent cryptocurrency intelligence agency, Chainalysis, Nigeria ranked second globally in September 2023 for the adoption of cryptocurrencies. According to the volume of Google searches for “cryptocurrency” or “buy crypto,” Nigeria became the nation most interested with cryptocurrencies in August 2022.
It appears that the regulators are less amenable to Nigeria’s rapid embrace of cryptocurrencies. The president of Nigeria’s advisor advocated for the outlawing of Binance, KuCoin, and other cryptocurrency trading platforms in Nigeria in February 2024. The central bank of Nigeria outlawed registered financial institutions from offering services to cryptocurrency exchanges operating within the nation two years ago.