Amid Clampdown, Binance Ends Naira Services March 8

Following its several run ins with the federal government as well as the Central Bank of Nigeria on foreign exchange in the country,

One of the largest cryptocurrency trading platforms, Binance is exiting Nigeria as it has told its customers to withdraw their funds on or before March 8, 2024.

This is as it stopped accepting naira deposits from Tuesday, March 5, 2024.

The cryptocurrency platform, in a statement issued yesterday said: “Binance will discontinue all Nigerian Naira (NGN) services as per the timeline below. Users are encouraged to withdraw NGN, trade their NGN assets or convert NGN into crypto prior to the discontinuation of these NGN services.”

Binance said from 9am on March 8, 2024, any remaining NGN balances in users’ Binance accounts will be automatically converted to USDT based on the conversion rate. Binance said the conversion rate for automatic conversions will be 1 USDT per N1,515.13.

All spot trading pairs against the naira will be delisted on March 7 at 3:00 a.m. UTC. Open spot orders for these pairs will be automatically closed. Binance Convert, Binance P2P, the exchange’s Auto Invest feature, and Binance Pay will also cease support for the naira at various dates and times.

“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.

Users should ensure they have not selected ‘Hide Small Balances’ in all of their wallets to view their assets after trading ceases.

“Binance Auto-Invest will delist NGN after 2024-03-06 03:00 (UTC). Users may choose to remove the plan(s) beforehand. Otherwise, the next recurring cycle of the aforementioned token(s) will fail,” it added.

The crypto platform is being accused of manipulating the country’s currency leading to its steady fall against other currencies. Some of its executives are also currently being detained by the Nigerian government.