The federal government has imposed a $10 billion punishment on Binance, a cryptocurrency trading platform, amid charges of affecting the country’s FX crisis.
Bayo Onanuga, President Bola Tinubu’s special assistant on information and strategy, announced this in an interview with the BBC on Friday morning, March 1.
According to Onanuga, Binance benefitted handsomely from its “illegal transactions” in Nigeria, while the country incurred significant loses. He went on to clarify that Binance isn’t registered in Nigeria and has no presence there.
He said that users exploited the platform to arbitrarily establish dollar-naira rates, which harmed the value of the local currency.
Onanuga further explained that the Binance team was already cooperating with the Nigerian government by providing useful information, and had already suspended naira-related transactions on the platform.
“The platform fixes the exchange rate in Nigeria, which is illegal. The Central Bank of Nigeria is the only authority that can fix the exchange rate for Nigeria. Binance harbours a lot of people who fix exchange rates which impacted the country badly at a time when the government is trying to stabilize the economy.” he said
He added that Binance influenced the increase in foreign exchange rates through currency speculations which made the Naira value to fall by almost 70% in recent months.