Nigeria Limits ATM Withdrawals for Individuals and Businesses – Aspen Market Daily

Daily Market Wrap

• Crypto market cap: 841.79B, down 1.75%
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• Top gainer: Toncoin (TON), up 9.69%
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News of the Day?

Nigeria bans ATM cash withdrawals over $225 a week to force use of CBDC

Why it matters:

• Nigeria launched their CBDC, the eNaira in October of 2021 but has seen a slow adoption rate as the Central Bank struggles to convince its citizen to use the CBDC
• With less than 0.5% of the population using eNaira, the Central Bank of Nigeria issued a directive to financial business on December 6th 2022 to limit ATM withdrawals to $45 a day and $225 a week, equivalent to 20,000 and 100,000 Nigerian nairas respectively
• Withdrawals exceeding the limit will have to be processed at the bank with a 5% service fee, in line with the country’s “cash-less” policy launched back in 2012

Crypto Daily Spotlight

Arbitrum money market Lodestar Finance exploited

Brief introduction: Arbitrum is a layer 2 scaling solution that is considered to be one of the most EVM-compatible rollups. As an optimistic rollup, it scales Ethereum smart contracts by executing them on the Arbitrum mainnet, which launched on September 1, 2021. The launch of the Arbitrum mainnet gained widespread support as OffChain Labs secured $120 million in funding prior to the launch.

Why it matters:?

• Arbitrum-based lending protocol Lodestar Finance encountered a flash loan attack with PlutusDaO’s plvGLP token
• According to Lodestar, the attacker first manipulated the exchange rate of the plvGLP contract, supplied that as collateral to Lodestar before borrowing all available liquidity up to the collateralisation ratio
• DefiLlama shows the TVL on the platform has depleted by $6.9 million and the hacker is believed to have made away with $5.8 million in profit; the finance platform has since paused all borrowing and liquidation activity

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