BUSINESS ROUNDUP: FTX files for bankruptcy; Cost of things to rise as dollar sells at premium price; other stories

Hello, and welcome to the 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:

· Cost of things to rise as dollar sells at premium price

· Dollar sells for N850 in black market

· Twitter suspends $8 subscription based verification

· FTX files for bankruptcy

Summary:

The dollar sold for N850 in the black market on Thursday.

A Bureau De Change operator in the Ogba, area of Lagos State told Ripples Nigeria he sold one dollar for N860 on Wednesday.

Also, in the Investors and Exporters window, which is the official foreign exchange market, the Naira appreciated against the dollar by 0.09 percent on Wednesday.

Traders exchanged a dollar for naira at the rate of N445.67/$1 at the close of trading, below the N446.10/$1 both currencies traded on Tuesday.

The microblogging site, Twitter, has suspended its newly introduced $8 subscription based verification.

The social media network disclosed this in a statement on Friday after some fake accounts emerged on the platform following the announcement.

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who completed a $44 billion deal for the takeover of Twitter in October, had introduced the $8 monthly charges as part of changes coming to the blue app.

READ ALSO:BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Emirates Airlines suspends flights to Nigeria; Nigerian govt to transfer petroleum products pipelines to private investors; other stories

Individuals and traders are still buying dollars at a premium rate in the black market, and this will continue to fuel inflation for goods that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is not providing foreign currencies for.

The Bureau De Change operators are selling the United States currency between N870/$1 in Ikotun and N900/$1 in Isolo areas of Lagos State, Ripples Nigeria gathered on Tuesday.

This publication learnt that the highest rate of the dollar has remained at N900 this week. As of Monday, the exchange rate between the USD and naira was between N820 to N900 across various areas in Lagos.

One of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, Futures Exchange (FTX), has filed for bankruptcy, as the wealth of the founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, crashed to zero.

FTX filed for the bankruptcy days after world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, pulled out of an acquisition deal with the company, citing probe by US authorities and alleged misuse of customers funds as reason for not acquiring Bankman-Fried’s company.

The financial crisis in FTX came as a shock, as the company had bailed out crypto lender, BlockFi, with $250 million loan in June.

On NSE ROUND UP: Access, Transcorp among active entities as investors trade N2.16bn worth of shares

The equity capitalization in the Nigerian capital market went up slightly by 0.05 percent on Friday.

The market capitalization rose by N14.12 billion from N23.93 trillion to N23.94 trillion after eight hours of trading today.

Similarly, the All-Share Index was up by 25.93 basis points, moving from 43,942.82 to 43,968.75 on Friday.

Investors traded 209.70 million shares worth N2.16 billion in 2,942 deals. This was in contrast to the 405 million shares worth N3.09 billion traded by investors in 3,188 deals the previous day.

Cornerstone led the gainers’ list with a 10 percent rise in share price, moving from N0.40kobo to N0.44kobo per share.

On the tech scene, YouTube, CutStruct, Finastra, BInk, Contro, Kuda, Twitter were some of the names that made the headlines in the tech ecosystem this week.

A Nigerian construction procurement platform, CutStruct, has secured a $600k pre-seed funding round to boost its B2B construction procurement.

Also, during the week, a South African healthtech startup, Contro, has announced closing an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round of R10.1 million (~$5.6 million).

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