Following its indictment by the Nigerian government on alleged manipulation of the country’s foreign exchange market and subsequent order given to it to discontinue its services in the country, Binance, a leading cryptocurrency trading platform, has advised Nigerians trading on its exchange to withdraw all their NGN assets.
Specifically, Binance disclosed that it would no longer accept Naira deposit on its platform, and that Nigerians trading on its platform now have until March 8 to withdraw their assets, otherwise any of such assets would be converted to USDT.
In a statement published on its website on the latest development on its operations, the crypto platform clarified: “Fellow Binancians, 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.
“From 2024-03-08 08:00 (UTC), any remaining NGN balances in users’ Binance accounts will be automatically converted to USDT based on the conversion rate below.
“Binance will not support deposits of NGN after 2024-03-05 14:00 (UTC).
“Withdrawals of NGN will not be supported after 2024-03-08 06:00 (UTC).
“After 2024-03-08 08:00 (UTC), Binance will convert any remaining NGN balances in users’ Spot and Funding wallets into USDT on behalf of users at a ratio of 1 USDT = 1,515.13 NGN.
“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”, it added.
In addition, Binance maintained that it would delist all existing NGN spot trading pairs (i.e., BTC/NGN and USDT/NGN) at 2024-03-07 03:00 (UTC) as all open spot orders with respect to the above trading pairs will automatically be closed when trading ceases in the relevant trading pair.
It, therefore, advised users to ensure they have not selected “Hide Small Balances” in all of their wallets to view their assets after trading ceases.”
Similarly, the crypto platform stated that “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” and also remove NGN from the list of supported payment options on Binance Pay at 2024-03-06 03:00 (UTC).
