Binance ends naira support in Nigeria amidst regulatory pressure

Global cryptocurrency exchange Binance has announced that it will no longer support Nigerian naira (NGN) services on its platform. The decision to halt support for NGN comes amid a foreign exchange clampdown by the Nigerian government, which has impacted Binance’s P2P trading service.

The details  

• In a statement on its website on Tuesday, Binance advised users to withdraw all their naira balances before March 8th or risk being converted to USDT.  
• It added that it has discontinued the option to deposit in naira effective today. Users who do not withdraw or convert their naira assets before the March 8th deadline will have their balances converted to USDT at 1 USDT for 1,515.3 naira. 
• In addition, all spot trading pairs involving the naira will be delisted in two days, including BTC/NGN and USDT/NGN. It also confirmed that it has already stopped all naira trading pairs on its peer-to-peer marketplace. 
• These measures imply that while Nigerian users can continue to use the platform to trade other currencies and assets, they cannot add or withdraw naira. They would have to transfer their assets to other services that support naira on- and off-ramping.  

Before now 

• Binance has recently come under fire from the Nigerian government, which has accused it of causing damages to the country’s economy by allowing its users to fix foreign exchange rates arbitrarily. 
• Last week, a Nigerian government official confirmed an inter-agency investigation into the activities of the global exchange. 
• In a BBC interview, a spokesman for the Nigerian government claimed that the Nigerian government is asking for $10 billion in damages from Binance. This claim has been labeled as false by a company official.