BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Bitcoin investors lose $193.13bn; World Bank criticizes CBN exchange policies; 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 investors lose $193.13bn
• World Bank criticizes CBN exchange policies
• Diaspora remittances drop 62.4% to $1.96bn in 10 Months
• Nigerian govt approves bill on tax reform, revenue mobilisation

Summary:

Bitcoin has been bleeding since second week of November, but its losses deepened in the last 24hour, losing 17.64 percent in its market price, as Omicron lockdown sentiment failed to boost investors’ confidence.

In 2020, global lockdown and travel restrictions induced by COVID-19 outbreak had swayed investors to turn to bitcoin and the crypto market as a store of value, hedging inflation.

This pushed bitcoin into its longest bullish run. With the discovery of Omicron compelling countries to roll out travel restriction and talk about possible lockdown, the 2020 effect has failed to lift the bitcoin market amid sell pressure in Q4 2021.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has revealed that Nigerians outside the country sent home $1.96 billion in the first 10 months of 2021.

This was 62.4 percent lower when compared to the $5.21billion recorded in 2020 and $19.2 billion in 2019.

The CBN disclosed this in its latest update on ‘international payment’ data titled direct remittance.

The National Economic Council (NEC) on Tuesday approved the Finance Bill 2022.

The council, according to a statement issued by the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the Vice President, Laolu Akande, approved the memo at the end of its meeting presided over by his principal, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Read also: BUSINESS ROUNDUP: CBN retains interest rate at 11.5%; Crypto miners hack Google Cloud accounts; Other stories

The Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, presented the bill to the council.

The World Bank has again slammed the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN’s) exchange rate management policies.

According to the Bretton wood institution, the exchange rate policies of Nigeria are not only discouraging investors from coming into the country, but they were also fuelling inflation in the country.

This was contained in the November edition of Bank’s Nigeria Development Update, saying there had been intense pressure on the naira, with the CBN constantly raising the nominal official exchange rate.

On NSE ROUNDUP: Investors lose N112.2bn as Nigeria’s capital market bearish trading continues

Shareholders’ investment in the Nigerian capital market dropped by 0.5 percent on Thursday.

The development caused shareholders to lose N112.27 billion within eight hours of trading as the market capitalization dropped from N22.15 trillion to N22.04 trillion on Thursday.

The All-Share Index was down by 215.18 basis points to end the day at 42,247.98 below 42,463.16 posted on Wednesday.

Investors traded 324.01 million shares worth N5.29 billion in 4,706 deals on Thursday.

Meanwhile, on the tech space, Flex Finance, Octamile, ShapShap, MediSpark and Fixit45 were some of the names that made the headlines this week.

Flex Finance, a Nigerian fintech startup, raised a six-figure US dollar pre-seed funding round.

Also, exiting stealth mode, Nigeria’s Octamile, during the week, raised US$500,000 in pre-seed funding.

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