Binance, one of the globe’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges, has opted to cease operations in the Nigerian market. The exchange has declared its intention to discontinue all services associated with Nigeria’s fiat currency, the naira.
Beginning March 8th at 8:00 a.m. UTC, Binance will automatically convert naira balances to USDT (Tether), a stablecoin tied to the US dollar. However, this decision accompanies the halt of support for naira deposits after 14:00 UTC today, with withdrawals scheduled to cease after March 8th at 6:00 a.m. UTC.
The conversion rate for this automatic process has been established at 1 USDT per 1,515.13 naira, according to the official announcement.
Additionally, Binance will delist all spot trading pairs involving the naira on March 7th at 3:00 a.m. UTC, and open spot orders for these pairs will be automatically closed.
Several Binance services will no longer facilitate naira transactions, including Binance Convert, Binance P2P (Peer-to-Peer), the Auto Invest feature, and Binance Pay.
Binance’s decision to withdraw from the Nigerian market arises amidst regulatory tensions with the country’s authorities. Just last week, two Binance executives were apprehended in Nigeria by the office of the National Security Adviser. The company has been accused of contributing to the depreciation of the naira.
