Nigeria Dismisses Rumor of $10 Billion Binance Fine
The presidential advisor of Nigeria recently refuted claims about Binance facing a $10 billion fine. Bayon Onanuga told local media outlets that the news about Binance exchange facing a massive fine from the government is not based in reality. On this account, the representative has claimed that the government or regulatory agencies are not planning to take such steps.
Onanuga, the special advisor to the Nigerian President regarding energy and strategy has denied allegations. The news first started circulating after a BBC report circulated a misquotation from Nigerian government officials. People’s Gazette is a local media outlet in Nigeria published a corrective statement from the president’s office noting that his words were misrepresented.
He further noted that there are no definite decisions on the matter. At the same time, Onanuga noted that he has not sent any official notification or informed Binance about the $10 billion fine. He claimed that there was a possibility of financial penalty.
However, he has confirmed that for the time being nothing is confirmed. On the matter of $10 billion Binance penalty, the publication has stated that Binance is not in loop and has not received information.
Nigerian Government to Impose Strict Crypto Policies
The government of Nigeria has continued to impose stringent trading regulations on crypto sector. On this account, various crypto exchanges were banned to protect the devaluation of the local fiat. As per the official notification issued by Binance.com, the exchange has decided to delist Naira from its spot, convert, Binance P2P, Auto Invest, and Binance Pay by 6th March, 2024.
At the same time, the trading platform will halt deposits, withdrawals, and conversions in NGN by 8th March, 2024. The decision has arrived after Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) alleged suspicious fund inflows at Binance.
To address the complaint, Binance decided to delist NGN from P2P trading platform on 28th February. The p2p feature on Binance allows investors to purchase and sell cryptocurrencies without third-party.
Binance is facing regulatory scrutiny in Nigeria with CBN issuing notification regarding suspicious transactions on the platform in 2023. CBN Governor, Olayemi Cardoso has claimed that the platform processed around $26 billion worth of transactions last year for Nigerian consumers. On the other hand, the National Security Advisor office confirmed the arrest of two Binance officials from Abuja.
Central Bank of Nigeria Eases Ban on Cryptocurrency Transactions
In 2023, CBN eased the ban on banking firms engaging in cryptocurrency transactions after two years. At the same time, the firm also issued regulatory guidelines for virtual asset service providers to standardized practices within the local industry. Nigeria became the second nation to launch a Central Bank Digital Currency in 2022.
The Stablecoin Consortium of Africa issued an NGN-pegged stablecoin called cNGN. The product was issued by CBN regulated sandbox in February of same year. In other news, a multitude of crypto trading platforms crashed namely Binance, Kraken, Coinbase, and Bybit. The issue was noticed after Bitcoin hit $60,000 for the first time after two years on 28th February.
Centralized Exchanges
Ivo Crnkovic Rubsmen, CSO at dYdX, told Cointelegraph that the temporary outage was attributed to algorithm trading. He further stated that such incidents happen during every Bull Run on account of retail investments and major price changes. Rubsmen further stated that centralized exchanges have the ability to set custom trade limits for individual market markers that can increase workload during rising trading volumes.
He explained that centralized exchange usually appoint one market maker based on goodwill. The trade limit is usually 10 times higher which works under normal circumstances. However, during a Bull Run when trading volumes rise exponentially and there is a meteoric rise in transactions, the same rate limit is higher.
Meanwhile, decentralized exchanges rate limit settings are organic since there is no direct dealing with liquidity providers. He retained that centralized exchanges are optimized and efficient but less reliable in comparison to DEX to handle Bull Run volume waves.
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