Binance Battles Nigerian Naira Claims, Promotes FDUSD and Portal Launches

By: Isha Das

Mr. Bayo Onanuga, an advisor to Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, accused Binance of manipulating the exchange rate for Nigeria and undermining the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)'s role. Binance's P2P platform for Nigerian users was recently 'automatically paused', leading to difficulties in selling USDT above a certain price. This disruption and accusations led frustrated users to shift to other P2P platforms like KuCoin and ByBit. Claims emerged of Binance users struggling to trade USDT on the platform as Nigeria's fiat currency fell to record lows against the US dollar. However, Binance refuted these accusations, stating that the exchange is not a price discovery platform and that it doesn't intend to replace official currency pricing in Nigeria.

Meanwhile,First Digital USD (FDUSD), a stablecoin, has surged in popularity over the past five months. It has dethroned the Circle-issued USD Coin (USDC) as the second most popular trading pair for Bitcoin on Binance. The stablecoin's trading volume climbed 51.1% to $122 billion in January, and its market capitalization increased approximately 13% to an all-new high of $2.44 billion.

In other news, a cross-chain gaming token by Portal is set for launch soon. Binance is offering a whopping 50 million in Ethereum gaming token rewards to promote it. The pre-market trading price of the gaming token is estimated to be above $1.