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Nigerians fear new crypto crackdown as currency drops 15% and officials blame more than Binance
Nigerian officials target peer-to-peer crypto trading for naira's fall.
The battle with crypto is getting worse in Africa's biggest nation.
Nigeria’s crypto investors are feeling a sense of déjà vu.
And it’s not good.
The country’s fiat currency, the naira, has lost 15% of its value against the US dollar in the last seven days.
The last time this happened, Nigeria’s government banned Binance, arrested two of its executives, and charged them with money laundering and tax evasion.
Lowest level
That drop has arrested a month-long effort by the Central Bank of Nigeria to prop up the naira’s value after it sunk to its lowest-ever level in the foreign exchange market.
Once again, the authorities are blaming crypto peer-to-peer trading for the fall despite Binance’s forced exit from the market last month, according to Nigerian officials close to the situation.
Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the country’s anti-corruption police, said it has discovered alleged foreign exchange racketeering that is “worse than Binance.”
Court order
“They call them P2P and all of that [and] we noticed in the last two days that dollars have started appreciating,” EFCC chairman Ola Olukoyede said in a meeting on Tuesday monitored by DL News.
It is likely Olukoyede is referring to the centralised crypto exchange platform KuCoin
— Anonymous crypto trader
The EFCC’s top cop said the commission obtained a court order on Monday to freeze 300 of such accounts. One trader allegedly facilitated $15 billion in P2P transactions last year, the EFCC said.
For Nigerian crypto investors, the situation feels eerily familiar as pro-government figures have already launched online campaigns against exchanges like KuCoin, ByBit, and OKX.
Nigeria’s central bank, on Wednesday, debunked a fake directive purporting to direct commercial lenders to freeze accounts of crypto traders
