- KuCoin has joined Binance and OKX to pull p2p support in Nigeria.
- The KuCoin decision comes as authorities have embarked on a crypto exchange crackdown.
- The country’s central bank has also moved to restrict crypto transactions.
“Which exchange is next?”
That’s the question Nigerian crypto market participants have asked in recent weeks as the government has cast its eye on crypto p2p trading to catch the falling dagger, the country’s local currency. According to authorities, bad actors have thwarted monetary policy efforts to stabilize the naira by manipulating its value through alleged pump-and-dump schemes on these crypto p2p platforms.
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This belief led to a crackdown on crypto exchanges, which forced Binance and OKX to withdraw support for the naira on their p2p platform. With the Nigerian SEC announcing plans to follow up the recent crackdown with an official crypto p2p ban, KuCoin has followed suit.
A “Temporary Pause?”
On Wednesday, May 15, many Nigerian KuCoin users were shocked: they could no longer find the naira on the exchange’s p2p platform.
In an announcement on the same day, KuCoin confirmed it had pulled naira support on its p2p platform, describing the move as a “temporary pause” to ensure compliance.
Without going into details, the firm asserted that it was committed to resolving the situation quickly so it could resume naira p2p services.
The KuCoin decision is the latest salvo in a sequence of events that have marked the rollback of progress made in December 2023, when the country’s central bank removed a two-year embargo on banks that prevented them from facilitating crypto transactions.
Walls Close in on Nigerian Crypto Traders
In the past two weeks, the country’s central bank has instructed financial institutions to freeze and report cryptocurrency transactions.
At the same time, in the past three weeks, Nigeria’s anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, has obtained permission to freeze over 1,000 accounts belonging to crypto traders pending investigations that could lead to prosecutions for money laundering and terrorism financing.
On the Flipside
- In a recent blog post, Binance CEO Richard Teng asserted that efforts to seek practical guidance from the Nigerian SEC on licensing procedures in the past year had been met with no response.
- Despite the ongoing crypto crackdown, the naira has depreciated recently, trading at around 1,520 naira per dollar.
Why This Matters
KuCoin’s move to cease naira support on its p2p platform is the latest sign of escalation in Nigeria’s crypto crackdown. With the looming ban, crypto p2p transactions will likely move to encrypted messaging platforms where users will likely face greater risk of scams and exploitative rates.
Read this for more on the recent Nigeria crackdown:
Unraveling Binance’s Nigeria Woes as Govt Hunts User Info
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