Binance will halt all transactions and trading in Nigeria's local currency after March 8 amid a country-wide crackdown on crypto exchanges that have been blamed by authorities for feeding a black market for foreign exchange. It will stop supporting withdrawals after Friday and any remaining balances in Nigerian Naira will be automatically converted into Tether - a stablecoin whose value is pegged to the U.S. dollar. Binance a cryptocurrency exchange platform, was accused of exploiting the Naira which led to its crash. More so, the company is also accused of terrorism financing, money laundering, and tax evasion, among other things.
The cryptocurrency exchange will automatically convert naira balances to USDT beginning March 8 at 8:00 a.m. UTC, although support for NGN deposits will end after 14:00 UTC today. Withdrawals will be unsupported after March 8, at 6:00 a.m. UTC.
The company, in a statement on Tuesday, advised users to withdraw NGN, trade their NGN assets, or convert NGN into crypto.
The statement read, “Users are encouraged to withdraw NGN, trade their NGN assets, or convert NGN into crypto prior to the discontinuation of these NGN services.“From 2024-03-08 08:00 (UTC), any remaining NGN balances in users’ Binance accounts will be automatically converted to USDT based on the conversion rate below.
“Binance will not support deposits of NGN after 2024-03-05 14:00 (UTC). Withdrawals of NGN will not be supported after 2024-03-08 06:00 (UTC).“After 2024-03-08 08:00 (UTC), Binance will convert any remaining NGN balances in users’ Spot and Funding wallets into USDT on behalf of users at a ratio of 1 USDT = 1,515.13 NGN.“Please note that the conversion rate is calculated based on the average closing price of the USDT/NGN trading pair on Binance Spot in the last seven days.
“The conversion may take approximately up to 24 hours or longer. USDT tokens will be credited to users’ Spot wallets thereafter, and users can confirm receipt of the tokens via the Convert History page.“If users hold less than 0.00000001 USDT worth of NGN in their Spot and Funding wallets, they will each receive 0.00000001 USDT in their Spot wallets after the conversion.”
