By Adedapo Adesanya
The Naira appreciated against the US Dollar in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM) on Wednesday, December 4 as the Electronic Foreign Exchange Matching System (EFEMS) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which sets new guidelines for authorised foreign exchange (FX) dealers, continued to boost operational efficiency and transparency of the nation’s currency market.
The system offers spot-matching functionality to the interbank community for the US Dollar against other currencies. It allows anonymous orders to be placed into a central limit order book, which is displayed and matched with counterparty orders based on mutual trading limits and other parameters configured by each bank.
This further fortified the local currency against the greenback in the official market at midweek by 1.8 per cent or N29.46 to settle at N1,613.69/$1, in contrast to the preceding day’s N1,643.15/$1.
Equally, the Naira strengthened its value against the Pound Sterling in the spot market by N37.50 to sell at N2,044.86/£1 compared with the preceding session’s N2,082.36/£1, and against the Euro, it gained N37.94 to quote at N1,691.31/€1 versus Tuesday’s closing price of N1,729.25/€1.
In the same vein, the Nigerian currency improved its value against its American counterpart in the parallel market yesterday by N25 to trade at N1,705/$1 compared with the previous day’s value of N1,730/$1.
In the cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin’s (BTC) price surged past the $100,000 mark for the first time in its history, fueled by institutional demand, corporate accumulation and heightened expectations of crypto-friendly policies under Donald Trump’s presidency.
It was sold at $102,132.92 after a 5.9 per cent growth with its market capitalisation nearing $2 trillion, 15 years after coming into existence, while Dogecoin (DOGE) rose by 6.1 per cent to $0.444, and Ethereum (ETH) increased by 4.3 per cent to $3,841.56.
However, Ripple (XRP) crashed by 12.6 per cent to $2.28, Binance Coin (BNB) went south by 4.7 per cent to close at $721.75, Cardano (ADA) slid by 3.3 per cent to $1.19, Litecoin (LTC) declined by 3.0 per cent to $126.26, and Solana (SOL) dropped by 1.9 per cent to settle at $234.23, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and the US Dollar Coin (USDC) traded flat at $1.00 apiece.