Special Adviser to the President on information and strategy, Bayo Onanuga, has called for the ban of peer-to-peer exchange platform, Binance, accusing it of “blatantly setting exchange rate for Nigeria, hijacking CBN role.”
There were earlier reports that the federal government was considering a clampdown on online platforms of Binance and other crypto firms such as Forextime, OctaFX, Crypto, FXTM, Coinbase, Kraken, to avert what it considers continuous manipulation of the forex market and illicit movement of funds.
According to the report, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) had already communicated the directive to telcos and they had started acting on it.
Onanuga said: “Binance, facing regulatory showdown in many countries, and causing disruptions in the currency market, should not be allowed to dictate the value of the naira, not on its crypto exchange platform. Other crypto platforms such as Kucoin, and Bybit should be banned from operating in our cyberspace. FX platform Aboki should be re-banned.
“The EFCC and the CBN should move against these platforms trying to manipulate our national currency to Ground Zero. Crypto should be banned in our country or else this bleeding of our currency will continue unabated.”
Binance in a blog post on its website, said its P-2-P platform is market-driven and not for currency pricing in Nigeria.
It said, “Binance provides a P2P marketplace, not as a price discovery platform. To be clear: it is market-driven and is not intended to be a proxy for currency pricing in Nigeria.
“To protect users, and to prevent any abuse, our system automatically pauses in the event of a period of significant currency movement.
“Late last night, we observed a temporary suppression of prices that briefly reached our system limit. We quickly made the necessary adjustments to allow trading to continue,” it said.
Binance further said it had put in place stringent measures to protect users in the market, including real-time monitoring, immediate removal of non-compliant advertisements, and permanent removal of bad actors from using its P2P product.
`it assured that it would continue to work with regulatory authorities, adding that foreign exchange rates are influenced by various complex factors which Binance does not influence.
In August 2023, the Association of Bureaux De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON) urged the federal government to ban the operation of Binance in the country, saying it was one of the many factors putting pressure on the naira.
“If you know about Binance, you will know that Binance trading is becoming the anchorage of both the investors and exporters window and the parallel market, which is unfortunate. So, we have to do something that can stop Binance. It’s a competition; we need to ban Binance and the only way to do so is if you have liquidity. As I speak, Binance is the most liquid market; they do 1.2 million transactions per second. So, it’s a very liquid market but that is not a scary status, we can break it through our local content and peculiarities,” ABCON president, Aminu Gwadabe said at the time.
In September 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) put out a disclaimer on Binance Nigeria Limited, saying the platform was “neither registered nor regulated by the Commission and its operations in Nigeria are therefore illegal.”
The fir, however, continued its operations, attracting huge patronage especially among urban youths and suspected speculators and money launderers.
