Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has decided to exit the Nigerian market.
The exchange has announced discontinuing all services related to Nigeria’s fiat currency, the naira.
Starting from March 8 at 8:00 a.m. UTC, Binance will automatically convert naira balances to USDT (Tether), a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar.
However, the move comes with a cessation of support for naira deposits after 14:00 UTC today, and withdrawals will be terminated after March 8 at 6:00 a.m. UTC.
According to the official announcement, the automatic conversion rate has been set at 1 USDT per 1,515.13 naira.
Furthermore, Binance will delist all spot trading pairs involving the naira on March 7 at 3:00 a.m. UTC, with open spot orders for these pairs closed automatically.
Several Binance services will no longer support 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 comes amid regulatory conflict with the country’s authorities.
Last week, two Binance executives were detained in Nigeria by the office of the National Security Adviser.
The company had been accused of being responsible for the free fall of the naira.