Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Olayemi Cardoso, has disclosed that $26 billion passed through Binance Nigeria from unidentified sources in one year.
Cardoso disclosed this to journalists on Tuesday after the CBN Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting at the CBN headquarters in Abuja.
Recently, Special Adviser to the President on information and strategy, Bayo Onanuga, called for the ban of peer-to-peer exchange platform, Binance, accusing it of “blatantly setting exchange rate for Nigeria, hijacking CBN role.”
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.