The Nigerian Naira drops further against the United States Dollar at the parallel market, the Nigerian black market for foreign exchange on Wednesday.

Naira traded at N740 to a United States Dollar, a decline of N10 from the N730 it traded on Tuesday.

At the Investors and Exporters’ foreign exchange window, the Naira traded at N440.00 against the United States Dollar it opened the day on Wednesday, before dropping to N440.67 at the close of business for the day.

Currency traders at the Investors and Exporters‘ foreign exchange window transacted $95.39 million in value during trading hours on Wednesday, according to the data available at the FMDQ-managed forex window. This is more than the $73.66 million transacted in the previous trading session.

Naira continues to struggle with Nigeria’s dwindling foreign revenue as crude oil theft jumped to a record high and oil production plummeted below 1 million barrels per day. Nigeria is an oil-dependent economy that realise on the sales of crude oil to service its economy and support the Nigerian Naira.

Crude Oil

Despite crude oil prices trading higher due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other global happenings, Nigeria has not been able to take advantage of this increase.

However, on Thursday Brent crude oil, against which Nigerian oil is priced, appreciated slightly by $0.15 or 0.16% to $92.60 a barrel at 11:38 am Nigerian time.

The U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil also inched higher, gaining $0.06 or 0.07% to $87.33 a barrel. The increase could be partly due to OPEC plus decision to cut crude production by 2 million barrels, even though the increase in price was expected to be much bigger, the uncertainty surrounding global growth amid heightened inflation continues to drag on commodity prices.

Cryptocurrency

Crypto decline continues across the board on Thursday as Bitcoin led the decline with 2.49% to settle at $18,668 a coin. Bitcoin rose to over $66,000 a year ago during cryptocurrency bullish run before it plunged after Luna’s fall.

Luna coin fell from over $110 a coin to below $0.0004 before pulling back to about $1.98 a coin at the moment, Investors King research has shown.

Eth, the token of Ethereum protocol, failed to appreciate as expected following its merge and successful transition to Proof of Stake (PoS). Since its merge, Eth has lost about $300 and presently trading at $1,241 a coin. In the last 24 hours, it lost 4.5% of its value.

Other cryptocurrencies trading in the red are BNB, XRP,  Solana, Stellar, Cardano (ADA), Cronos (CRO), Doge and others.