07-03-2024

Nigeria's Central Bank Enlists Gluwa Nigeria to Boost eNaira Systems Adoption
By Camomile Shumba

The Central Bank of Nigeria is working with blockchain technology firm Gluwa Nigeria to make the eNaira digital currency's systems more efficient and boost adoption in the country of more than 226 million people.

The central bank plans to issue application programming interfaces (APIs) to Gluwa for integration with the company's Credal blockchain technology. APIs are software intermediaries that allow applications to talk to each other.

The "core objective is to harness the power of blockchain technology to enhance financial inclusion, improve eNaira functionality, and foster financial innovation," Gluwa said in a release shared with CoinDesk.

Connecting through Credal is intended to ensure easier loan origination, tracking, settlement, and credit scoring for local fintech lenders.

Nigeria has been trying to broaden acceptance of the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) since its launch in 2021. The number of eNaira wallets increased more than 12-fold between October 2022 and March 2023 to 13 million and the value of transactions climbed 63% to 22 billion naira ($14 million) in the first four months of last year.

The country has a $220 billion informal economy that thrives on cash, and eNaira adoption has not caught up with cash use in Africa's most populous country in part owing to a lack of merchants that accept it.

Edited by Sheldon Reback.

02-03-2024

SHIB Climbs as Shorts Lose $50M Betting Against Meme Coins

Volume of futures tracking meme coins continued to rise massively on Saturday as bets against meme tokens lost a cumulative $50 million in the past 24 hours.

Data from Coinglass shows shorts, or bets against Shiba Inu and other meme coins saw over $50 million in liquidations in the past 24 hours, contributing to price surge in Shiba Inu.

Liquidation refers to when an exchange forcefully closes a trader’s leveraged position due to a partial or total loss of the trader’s initial margin. It happens when a trader is unable to meet the margin requirements for a leveraged position (fails to have sufficient funds to keep the trade open).

Meme coins started to come into focus last week as proxy bets on the growth of whichever blockchains these tokens are based on. Ethereum-based Shiba Inu (SHIB) and other meme coins such as dogecoin (DOGE) have captured most of the meme trading volume on the ethereum network.

Bullish bets and open interest in SHIB and other meme coins have grown multi-fold to a cumulative $1.5 billion in the past few days, Coinglass data shows. A rise in futures bets indicates new money entering the market.

Meanwhile, the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), a benchmark for the biggest and most liquid cryptocurrencies, jumped nearly 5%.

Meme tokens are usually considered to have no intrinsic value but are quickly gaining favor among traders.

Some, like the Avalanche Foundation, a non-profit that maintains the Avalanche blockchain, have even started to invest in meme tokens built on the network in recognition of the online culture and memetic value that such tokens can drive among investors.

Market observers say meme coins are also a profitable, albeit risky, way to gain from ecosystem growth.

Article On CoinDesk By Shaurya Malwa. Edited by Joseph Emmanuel Emefiele

01-03-2024

Nigeria Government Demands $10B From Crypto Exchange Binance: BBC
A spokesperson for the president later denied an amount had been set, People's Gazette reported.
By Camomile Shumba, Sheldon Reback

Nigeria's government has demanded $10 billion from Binance after central bank Governor Olayemi Cardoso said the largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume had enabled $26 billion of untraceable funds to leave the country as it faces a foreign exchange crisis and is looking for ways to restrict capital outflows, the BBC reported.

The fine was levied because of the exchange's alleged illegal operations in the country, Bayo Onanuga, a spokesperson for President Bola Tinubu, told the BBC's pidgin language service on Friday. The exchange is setting an exchange rate for the Nigerian naira when only the central bank has that authority, Onanuga said.

Onanuga subsequently told Nigerian news service Peoples Gazette his comments had been misrepresented.

“I said our government may impose heavy fines on Binance for what happened,” Onanuga told the Gazette. “I never said Binance had been informed about the fines or that it would definitely be $10 billion. I only said the amount may be imposed, which is because nothing has been finalized yet.”

Nigerian authorities say Binance, which isn't registered to operate in the country, caused widespread economic disruption and contributed to the naira's 70% weakening in recent months, the BBC reported.

On Wednesday, two Binance executives were reportedly detained and their passports confiscated when they flew to Nigeria.

The country has been investigating crypto exchanges, the Financial Times reported recently.

Neither Binance nor the Nigerian government had responded to requests for comment before publication.

Edited by Sandali Handagama.

29-02-2024

Bitcoin Is Hitting All-Time Highs Around the World
By Sam Reynolds


While bitcoin remains shy of its November 2021 all-time high in U.S. dollar terms, it has already breached record highs in local currencies in many markets around the globe.

The U.S. dollar index (DXY) is ahead 10.7% since November 2021, meaning many currencies across the world have lost value. Among the countries where bitcoin has hit new highs in local terms are economic powerhouses like China, Japan, the U.K. and India, as well as developing markets like Argentina, Turkey, and Egypt.

"U.S. growth has remained exceptionally strong compared to Europe, the UK, and Japan, which has supported the [U.S. dollar]," Aurelie Barthere, an analyst in Nansen, wrote in a note to CoinDesk. "However, this is less clear going forward, as we have seen a series of weak consumption and housing data in the U.S. I see the DXY linked to crypto prices through the intermediary of the rates channel."

Japan has been a particularly weak case, with a 24% decline in the yen meaning bitcoin hit a record price in that country well before this week's fireworks that saw bitcoin prices soar.

"Japan’s government has been devaluing the yen, and the flow of liquidity has trickled into bitcoin as their fiat has weakened," March Zheng, Managing partner of Bizantine Capital explained in an interview with CoinDesk.

Edited by Stephen Alpher.

29-02-2024

Shiba Inu Adopts Tech to Bring More Privacy to SHIB Token Holders
By Shaurya Malwa

Shiba Inu plans to introduce a new privacy-focused network on top of the Shibarium blockchain in a move that boosts the value proposition of SHIB tokens, a representative shared with CoinDesk in a release on Wednesday.

Shiba Inu is working with open-source cryptography company Zama on the as-yet-unnamed network. The network will use Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) – a privacy tool that lets developers use data on untrusted domains without needing to decrypt it.

The Shiba Inu ecosystem token treat (TREAT) will power the "new privacy layer," which lets developers add a focused network on top of Shibarium, a layer-2 network that settles transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. The move will improve on-chain privacy for SHIB token holders, Shiba Inu developers said, and help safeguard their personal and transactional data.

"These are two different entities, and separate for a variety of reasons," Shytoshi Kusama, the pseudonymous founder of Shiba Inu, told CoinDesk in a message.

Shibarium went live last August as a low-fee ecosystem focused mainly on financial services and gaming. The network uses several tokens, BONE, TREAT, SHIB and LEASH, for different applications built on the blockchain.

Edited by Sheldon Reback.