Nigeria is named as one of the world's biggest peer-to-peer cryptocurrency marketplaces. According to Chainalysis, cryptocurrency transactions in the nation totaled $56.7 billion between July 2022 and June 2023.

In an effort to stop what it views as ongoing manipulation of the foreign exchange market and unlawful money transfers, the Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN) released a circular that limited banks and financial institutions from managing accounts for cryptocurrency service providers.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), acting on behalf of the government, had recently restricted the internet platforms of Binance and other cryptocurrency companies in an effort to stop what it views as ongoing manipulation of the foreign exchange market and unlawful money transfers.

To facilitate further probe into the suspected operations of the crypto exchange, it was reported that the federal government obtained a court warrant to detain 2 senior Binance executives just last week Tuesday,29th February. The arrest came amidst efforts to uncover the suspected manipulations of the country's foreign exchange market which has led to the continuous weakening of the Naira against major currencies of the world, particularly the US dollar.

Speaking at the press briefing & just concluded meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), CBN Governor, Mr. Olayemi Cardoso defended the bank's recent action against cryptocurrency platforms, citing Binance in particular as having permitted the use of its platform for malicious activity denominated in naira.

Cardoso clarified that $26 billion was accessed by unverified users on the platform in 2023, with all the associated consequences for monetary policy—chiefly, the propensity to fuel inflation and further weaken the naira.

“We are concerned that certain practices go on that indicate illicit flows going through a number of these crypto platforms and suspicious flows at best,”

“In the case of Binance, in the last one year alone, $26bn has passed through Binance Nigeria from sources and users who we cannot adequately identify,” he added.

In the most recent announcement to users of the exchange platform, the crypto exchange will automatically convert Naira (NGN) balances to Tether (USDT) from March 8 @ 8:00am. UTC will cease support for Nigerian deposit after 14:00 UTC today, as withdrawals will be unsupported after March 8 @ 6.00am UTC.

Users are hereby advised to trade their NGN assets, withdraw or convert them into cryptocurrency prior to this deadline.

What this implies is:

Binance will not support deposits of NGN after 2024-03-05 14:00 (UTC).

Binance Auto-Invest will delist NGN after 2024-03-06 03:00 (UTC).

Binance will remove NGN from the list of supported payment options on Binance Pay at 2024-03-06 03:00 (UTC).

Binance Convert will delist NGN and all corresponding pairs at 2024-03-07 02:00 (UTC).

NGN Spot Trading pairs (i.e.,BTC/NGN and USDT/NGN) will be delisted at 2024-03-07 03:00 (UTC).

Withdrawals of NGN will not be supported after 2024-03-08 06:00 (UTC).

On behalf of users, Binance will change any leftover NGN balances in their funding and spot wallets into USDT at the rate of 1USDT= 1,515 NGN after 2024/03/08 08:00 (UTC).

Closing thoughts

Given that one cannot deposit naira into the crypto exchange, neither can naira withdrawals be made into bank accounts from the binance platform, Nigerian crypto traders and investors should ensure they store their holdings in Trust wallets, Metamask or any other wallet that is not compromised.

However, note that you can still buy coins but only with USDT on the binance platform.