BY GODWIN IJEDIOGOR
THE world’s leading blockchain ecosystem and digital asset exchange, Binance, has announce plans to stop all its naira services from Friday, March 8, this year, following its face-off with Nigeria authorities.
The company, in a statement on its app on Tuesday, announced that it will stop naira deposits after March 5, while withdrawals will end on March 8.
“Any remaining NGN balances in users’ Binance accounts will be automatically converted to USDT,” the statement added.
Binance would also delist all existing NGN spot trading pairs on March 7, as Nigeria’s currency would be removed from the list of supported payment options on Binance Pay, the exchange’s payment solution.
This came as Nigeria cracked down on the global crypto exchange, with the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) arresting two of its executives last week on arrival in the country following a ban on the company’s website.
Nigerian authorities have accused Binance of benefiting from “illegal transactions” and imposed a $10billion fine on it.
But the company has denied knowledge of the fine.
Two weeks ago, Binance placed limits on peer-to-peer transactions trading the USDT/NGN pairfor the second time in six months, as its cryptocurrency exchange disabled the ‘sell’ feature and limited Nigerian users’ buy option to a price of ₦1,802.
It tried to have the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to reverse the ban.
Its problems with Nigeria started over the free fall of naira against US dollar at parallel foreign exchange market. The government on March 1 demanded $10billion as a fine from the company.
The Special Adviser on Information and Strategy to President Bola Tinubu, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, on Friday, March 1, said the fine was demanded for the illegal operations of Binance, which contributed hugely to the devaluation of the naira in recent times.
“The platform fixes the exchange rate for the country, and it is an illegal rate. The CBN is the only authority that can fix the exchange rate for the country,” he said.
On Monday, March 4, the National Assembly agreed to issue warrants of arrest against executives of cryptocurrency platform after a resolution was passed to that effect by the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Crimes during a hearing on a petition brought against the company.
In the latest development, Binance has removed the naira from its peer-to-peer feature on Wednesday, February 28, indicating interest to the leave the country.
The users were, however, advised to withdraw, trade their NGN assets or convert them into cryptocurrency before the March 8 deadline.
In addition, trading pairs involving NGN and the ability to deposit using the naira would cease temporarily, as the Nigerian currency would no longer be a supported payment method across Binance’s range of services.
