The president of Nigeria’s advisor, Bayo Onanuga, stated that no choice had been made on a fine for the cryptocurrency exchange.
A spokesman of the Nigerian government has denied rumours that cryptocurrency exchange Binance would be fined $10 billion. The claims made by the BBC, according to Bayo Onanuga, the Nigerian president’s special advisor on communication and strategy, are the product of a misquotation.
The People’s Gazette, a local news source, reports that Onanuga modified his statement to clarify that his remarks were misconstrued and that Binance hasn’t yet received a final sanction. According to Onanuga, he did not say that Binance was aware of the fines or that they would total $10 billion. Because nothing is definitive yet, he just brought up the prospect of a fine.
Binance is not aware of and has not been told of the $10 billion penalty, according to the Peoples Gazette. According to reports, the bitcoin exchange expressed a dislike for settling any fines with the Nigerian authorities.
The announcement coincides with increased regulatory scrutiny of cryptocurrency exchanges in Nigeria, where several sites have lately been prohibited in an effort to protect the naira, the nation’s currency. Amid an ongoing crackdown on the cryptocurrency exchange, Binance suspended the naira from its peer-to-peer (P2P) service on Wednesday, February 28.
Users, buyers, and sellers can transact without the assistance of a third party thanks to the P2P feature. After the government outlawed the country’s booming cryptocurrency business in 2021, under the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari, it gained popularity in Nigeria.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) expressed concerns in 2023 about “suspicious flows” of funds through Binance’s Nigerian branch, putting the exchange under greater scrutiny in that country. Governor of the CBN, Olayemi Cardoso, emphasised that $26 billion has come through Nigeria via Binance in 2023 from undisclosed users and sources.
As the country attempts to tighten down on cryptocurrency exchanges to quell rumours about the naira, the office of the National Security Adviser is also said to have detained two senior Binance personnel in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria.
The CBN announced rules for regulating virtual asset service providers in December 2023, concurrently lifting a two-year restriction on banks participating in cryptocurrency transactions.
The second nation to introduce a digital currency issued by a central bank in 2022 was Nigeria. In February, the Africa Stablecoin Consortium also introduced the cNGN stablecoin, which is pegged to the naira, in a CBN regulator sandbox.