In February Bayo Onanuga, a special adviser to Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, criticized Binance for manipulating exchange rates in Nigeria and undermining the role of the Central Bank of Nigeria in a strongly worded post on social media platform X. The EFCC and the CBN should take action against these platforms attempting to manipulate our country’s currency to a complete loss of value. Cryptocurrency must be prohibited in our country to prevent further devaluation of our currency. Binance’s peer-to-peer platform for Nigerian users was automatically paused yesterday due to reports of difficulties selling USDT at a specific price. Binance acknowledged the issue as a temporary suppression of prices and quickly adjusted its system to address the problem and resume trading. Many Nigerian Binance users took to social media to express frustration about their inability to trade USDT as the country’s fiat currency plummeted against the US dollar. Frustrated users began seeking alternative platforms, with Ray Youssef, former CEO of Paxful, suggesting his new platform, noOnes. A number of traders also verified to CryptoSlate that they were moving to alternate P2P platforms such as KuCoin and ByBit to conduct stablecoin trading. Over time, Nigerians have been increasingly opting to use Binance for buying digital assets as a way to protect themselves from increasing inflation and currency devaluation. The Binance P2P platform has become an important place for Nigerian forex traders to determine prices. Despite efforts by the Central Bank of Nigeria to stabilize the economy and currency, the impact of speculative traders on inflation and the financial economy remains a concern. Bashir Ahmad, a former presidential aide, believes that crypto exchanges have contributed to making the situation worse. He mentioned that depending on unauthorized crypto platforms to regulate forex can cause exchange rate fluctuations that impact entities like the Bureau De Change. On the other hand, Femi Longe and other stakeholders believe that the rise of Bitcoin and crypto trading in Nigeria is linked to the Central Bank of Nigeria’s past policy restricting access to foreign exchange. Additionally, Binance emphasized that it is not involved in determining prices.