The Presidency has warned that Binance’s unchecked actions could harm Nigeria’s economy, criticizing their influence on exchange rates.Binance is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency companies operating in Nigeria This warning was made by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga .He stated this while featuring on a Channel’s Tv program Politics Today .
“If we don’t clamp down on Binance, Binance will destroy the economy of this country. They just fix the rate,”
“We have saboteurs. Look at what Binance is doing to our economy. That is why the government moved against Binance. Some people sit down using the cyberspace to dictate even our exchange rate, hijacking the role of the CBN.
“They just sit down and fix anything they like. It’s a sabotage and we are trying to prevent that from happening henceforth.”
“The parallel market is not the real gauge of Nigeria’s economic health. The parallel market is an illegal market.
“I don’t even know why Nigerians and the media are feeding on the parallel market. That is not where we should go; what’s the CBN rate? As at Friday, the rate for the dollar was about N1600.
“Even in the so-called parallel market, the exchange rate is stabilizing there and that is what this needs. Our economy is too much dollarised. Importers are looking at the exchange rate and using it to fix prices, some of them arbitrarily, some of them actually profiteering,” Onanuga said
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Nigeria is considering imposing a huge fines, potentially amounting to billions of dollars, on Binance, as well as other cryptocurrency companies that are operating within the country.
