Binance, the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange, has announced that it will cease all its services related to Nigeria’s currency, the Naira, from March 8. The decision has been made in light of the company’s current regulatory issues in Nigeria. A statement made via its mobile application revealed this news.
Binance has been experiencing a crackdown on its operations in Nigeria, a West African nation. As part of this cessation of activities, Binance will discontinue deposits in Naira after March 5. Furthermore, the ability for customers to withdraw funds in Naira will stop from March 8.
On Tuesday, Binance released an official statement that all remaining NGN balances in the user accounts on Binance will be automatically converted into USDT – a cryptocurrency stablecoin that mirrors the price of the US dollar. Moreover, Binance will delist all the existing NGN spot trading pairs on March 7. The move also affects Binance Pay, the company’s payment solution service, with the exclusion of Naira from the list of accepted payment methods.
Binance’s recent decision to cease all its Naira services follows a series of crackdowns in Nigeria on the international cryptocurrency exchange. Binance found itself in trouble last week when two of its executives were detained by the National Security Adviser (NSA) upon their arrival in the country, subsequent to a ban on the company’s website by authorities.
The Nigerian authorities have accused Binance of profiting from illicit transactions and allegedly levied a substantial $10 billion fine on the platform, a charge which a presidential spokesperson reported. Nevertheless, Binance has rebuffed any allegations regarding its awareness of this supposed fine.
In similar developments about two weeks ago, Binance had imposed restrictions on peer-to-peer transactions of the USDT/NGN pair. This marked the second time within half a year that the company imposed trading restrictions; it had previously disabled the ‘sell’ feature and restricted the ‘buy’ option for Nigerian users to a price of ₦1802.
These challenges faced by Binance come in the wake of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s change of stance on cryptocurrency companies last year. Initially, this shift was considered a positive step for digital currency assets. However, the recent regulatory actions appear to cast doubt on this previously optimistic perspective.
