The demonetization announced by the regulator is aimed at combating counterfeiting, inflation and money laundering. As a result of the actions of the Central Bank, Nigerians shifted their attention to alternative financial instruments and digital assets, which led to an explosive increase in their prices.
Amid rush demand, peer-to-peer traders were selling BTC at over $62,000, which, according to LocalBitcoins, is 164% higher than the average domestic BTC price of $38,000.
On the afternoon of Monday, January 30, the price of BTC on the Nigerian crypto exchange NairaEX was about $38,792, which is almost 65% higher than the world average market price of bitcoin (about $23,314).. On the p2p platform Paxful BTC, Nigerians are offered the first cryptocurrency in the range of $28,000 to $39,300, with a premium of 18.1% to 65.8%.
According to the Google Trends browser, Nigeria is now the leader in the Internet sample for the queries: “buy bitcoin” and “how to buy bitcoin”.
Earlier, the Central Bank of Nigeria issued an order to banks and financial institutions in the country to limit the amount of cash withdrawals from both ATMs and branches, in an attempt to increase the acceptance of digital naira (eNaira).