BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Bitcoin crashes below $19,000; Nigeria’s S’East worst hit as petrol price rises 2.99%; Other stories

Hello, and welcome to Business Roundup this week. Here, we bring you highlights of events that happened during the week -from the capital market to the mainstream business activities, while not forgetting the tech/economy build up.

Here are the Headlines:
• Bitcoin crashes below $19,000, amid American billionaire’s $15,000 projection
• Nigeria records $3.5bn FX repatriation in two months —Emefiele
• Elon Musk slammed with $258bn lawsuit for promoting Dogecoin
• Nigeria’s South-East worst hit as price of petrol rises by 2.99%

Summary:

Bitcoin crashed on Saturday, falling below $19,000, a two-year low. The last time BTC traded at this level was in December 2020, after which it hit a bullish run to sell for as high as $68,990.90 in November 2021.

The cryptocurrency depreciated by -7.54% against the $20,471.48 it closed Friday with, as it slumped to $18,926.50 early hours of the next day. Year-to-date, bitcoin is down -59.13%, having traded around $46,311.74 on January 1.

This means in the last six months, bitcoin has shed $27,385.24 in price, and has lost $541.16 billion in market share.

The average retail price paid by consumers for Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) otherwise known as petrol increased to N173.08 in May.

The figure, according to a report released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Friday, was 2.99 percent higher than the N168.06 Nigerians paid for the commodity in May last year.

Also, on a month-on-month basis, the average retail price of the product increased by 0.27 percent from N172.61 in April to N173.08 last month.

Dogecoin has been labelled a fraudulent scheme by one Keith Johnson, who sued Elon Musk, and his two companies, Tesla and SpaceX, for promoting the cryptocurrency as an investable security to the public.

Johnson filed a class action lawsuit of $258 billion against the world’s richest man, saying that he and other investors in Dogecoin have lost about $86 billion to the cryptocurrency which has slumped -91.8% between May 2021, when it hit a high of 74 cents to Thursday, selling at six cents.

According to court documents, Johnson is seeking damages in two forms, first is compensation of $86 billion, as well as $172 billion due to losses incurred on the investment by him and fellow investors.

Read also:BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Nigeria spends N135.85bn to import motorcycles in six months; Passenger traffic for African airlines rises by 116.2%; Other stories

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has revealed that Nigeria has recorded the sum of $3.5 billion in foreign exchange repatriation from exporters, two months after the launch of the RT200 non-oil export rebate scheme.

Godwin Emefiele, governor of the CBN disclosed this on Thursday in Lagos at the RT200 non-oil export summit organized by the CBN and bankers committee.

Emefiele noted that over N3.5 billion has been paid to exporters who brought in their export proceeds.

On NSE ROUNDUP: Investors lose N341.2bn as Nigeria’s capital market crashes by 1.20%

The Nigerian stock market extended its downward trend with a loss of N341.26 billion at the close of trading on Friday.

This followed the crash of the market capitalization by -1.20% from N28.25 trillion posted on Thursday to N27.91 trillion today.

Similarly, the All-Share Index was down by 633.01 basis points to close at 51,778.08 compared to 52,411.09 achieved the previous day.

On the tech scene, Jobop, Rohlik, CBEA, Indoor Robotics, MFS Africa, Vetwork were some of the names that made the headlines this week.

African digital payments network, MFS Africa, announced raised a $100 million in Equity, Debt Funding led by Admaius Capital Partners.

Also, instant messaging platform, Whatsapp, during the week, announced the launch of a new feature to help users switch between phones.

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now