Misconception of selling at premium in Nigeria

[Charles-Tim]

I saw this while checking crypto news today, but it is actually not true.

This year, USD increased above ₦850 before it dropped to around ₦750 now. I have read about bitcoin selling at premium, but I noticed that people are getting this wrong at times, if it is pertaining to Nigeria.

If you use search engine, you will see central bank of Nigeria dollar to naira conversion rate which is the official rate of dollar conversion to naira

CBN rate,
$1 = ₦460 naira as of when I wanted to ost this

Parallel rate
$1 = 752

CBN rate is the official rate of converting dollar to naira, it is what search engine would likely bring up if you searched for dollar to naira conversion. But in Nigeria, people use parallel rate, which is also called the black market rate. The parallel rate is usually nothing new and it is what Nigerians are using to convert to naira and what crypto exchanges are using for p2p and trading pairs, but while CBN rate is only displayed as mark price but not the rate Nigerians are actually using to buy or sell bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.

USD CBN rate today is ₦460
Bitcoin price now at $23700
Multiply both to get bitcoin price in Nigeria which is ₦10,902,000
But not what people are using for the conversion to buy or sell their bitcoin

USD parallel rate today is ₦752
Bitcoin price now at ₦23700
Multiply both to get bitcoin price in Nigeria which is ₦17,822,400
This is the rate bitcoin buyers and sellers are using

This is the news:

The price of Bitcoin in Nigeria has skyrocketed to well above market levels amid continued efforts by the central bank to push its citizens into digitalized cash.

At the time of writing, the price of 1 BTC on Nigerian crypto exchange NairaEX is currently 17.8 million Naira, equating to a whopping $38,792.

This represents more than a 60% premium over the current market price of Bitcoin, which is around $23,700 at the time of writing.

It comes as the Central Bank of Nigeria has continued to impose limits on ATM cash withdrawals amid an ongoing effort to accelerate its shift to a cashless society.

The bolded part of the quote pissed me off, how can it relate to bitcoin selling at premium. Bitcoin is digital too while cashless policy is about digital. Nigerians can still withdraw above ₦500000 ($665, parallel rate) while organizations can withdrawal up to ₦5 million ($6650, parallel rate) before extra charges.

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[NeuroticFish]

I've been reading those news for some time now and was a bit puzzled because the things didn't seem to add up.
So thank you for clearing this up, now it makes sense 

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

cheers Charles-Tim, I appreciate the clarification and wish Martin Young of Cointelegraph would be here to read this. A little mistake: I think you omitted the letter "p" on the spelling of "post" there 👇.

CBN rate,
$1 = ₦460 naira as of when I wanted to ost this

I have gone through the article, and I don't blame the author, Martin Young, because he is not a Nigerian and can't really understand anything about the exchange rate of dollar to naira (CBN rate) the way you did. It is better not to write instead of giving wrong information to the readers.

How ever, the bank rate has always been what the Bitcoin sellers in Nigeria are using to calculate the Bitcoin price, despite the fact that the CBN rate is lower. The rate calculation has always been that of the bank, even before the enactment of the new law to limit withdrawals to #20,000 naira per day.

I think the bank rate you talk about is also being referred to as the "black market rate," which is popularly used to calculate for P2P trade and exchanges and not the CBN rate.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

This is the news:

The price of Bitcoin in Nigeria has skyrocketed to well above market levels amid continued efforts by the central bank to push its citizens into digitalized cash.

At the time of writing, the price of 1 BTC on Nigerian crypto exchange NairaEX is currently 17.8 million Naira, equating to a whopping $38,792.

This represents more than a 60% premium over the current market price of Bitcoin, which is around $23,700 at the time of writing.

It comes as the Central Bank of Nigeria has continued to impose limits on ATM cash withdrawals amid an ongoing effort to accelerate its shift to a cashless society.

I am just coming across this and must say that cointelegraph did a very bad job on this one, this is a total misinformation and should be condemned, i can just imagine how many traders that will read this news and rush down to exchanges that support Nigerian naira like Binance, Remitano, and try to convert their bitcoin to naira, then wait for it to fall back to the normal price so they could buy back cheaper, only to discover that the price of bitcoin here in Nigeria is just the same as it is in the whole world..
Highly misleading and unprofessional job from a supposed reputable news outlet.

[stompix]

Nothing new, some journalists making articles based on jokes on Twitter, like those so-called military analyst discussing ARMA footage.

Probably knowing that such a thing did exist in the past he rushed in, believing it was the same situation as it was in South Korea or Japan a few years ago, but that was entirely triggered by capital outflow control, where you couldn't simply pull that money out of the system unless you were a citizen there with deep connections outside but even that flattened at 20%.  Here if you could do such a thing with 60% everyone would just do cross-border payments and milk it till it goes down even at 10% rates whales that move millions would still take advantage of it and level the field.

[FanEagle]

Yeah they did the same thing with my nation too, and even Iran for a while which is a futile information considering you can't just buy somewhere and go to Iran and sell there, that's not going to happen, and even if you can, you won't be able to take your money out of there neither. It's a digital thing, everywhere all around the world, even in nations that's blocking bitcoin, the price of bitcoin is price of bitcoin.

The very best case for anyone is to find someone who has no other option and make them take a 10% cut, that's about it and nothing more. I understand people want to find a way to get rich quick, but this isn2t the way to do that, they need to find another method.