Bitcoin premium hits 60% in Nigeria 

In Nige­ria, the cost of Bit­coin has sky­rock­et­ed to lev­els far above the mar­ket as the government’s cen­tral bank con­tin­ues to encour­age the use of dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy, as report­ed by Cointelegraph.

Accord­ing to Coin­tele­graph, as of this writ­ing, the cost of 1 BTC on the Niger­ian cryp­tocur­ren­cy exchange NairaEX is 17.8 mil­lion Naira, or a stag­ger­ing $38,792.

Over the cur­rent mar­ket price of Bit­coin, which is approx­i­mate­ly $23,700 as of this writ­ing, this rep­re­sents a pre­mi­um of more than 60%. It occurs as the Cen­tral Bank of Nige­ria keeps lim­it­ing ATM cash with­drawals as part of ongo­ing efforts to has­ten the country’s tran­si­tion to a cash­less soci­ety, Coin­tele­graph fur­ther noted.

Cit­i­zens were only per­mit­ted to with­draw 20,000 NGN (about $43.50) from ATMs per day, up to a max­i­mum of 100,000 NGN (about $217), as of Jan­u­ary 9.

The action was tak­en just days before new Naira ban­knotes went into cir­cu­la­tion with the inten­tion of pre­vent­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing and infla­tion. Nige­ri­ans had until Jan­u­ary 24 to exchange their old­er, high­er denom­i­na­tion bank notes for the new mon­ey, per the cen­tral bank’s deadline.

(With insights from Cointelegraph)

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