OTC minimums in Nigeria: who will take a $5,000 trade?

No crypto OTC desk serving Nigeria publishes a minimum that a $5,000 trade would clear. Obiex, Luno and Yellow Card each set theirs at $50,000, Quidax's desk is for trades above $100,000, and Binance's manual desk starts at $200,000. For a trade that size the order book is the answer, and Daya Pro takes orders from $1.

An OTC desk is a private trading service where you agree one price with a dealer for the whole amount, instead of putting an order into a public market. Daya Pro takes a USDT/NGN order from $1, against the $50,000 minimum set by Obiex, Luno and Yellow Card. If you want the wider picture on buying and selling stablecoins in Nigeria, start with our guide to stablecoins in Nigeria. Every figure below comes from each company's own published pages, checked on 12 October 2026.

What is the minimum trade on a Nigerian crypto OTC desk?

Fifty thousand dollars is the going floor. Obiex, Luno and Yellow Card all publish that exact figure, each on its own pages and each arrived at independently. Quidax describes its desk as being for trades above $100,000. Binance sets $200,000 on its manual spot service. The lowest published figure on any of these venues is Bybit's $20,000, and that's still four times a $5,000 trade.

Here is what each one states, in its own words:

• Obiex says on its OTC desk page that "the minimum trade size is equivalent to $50,000", and that it evaluates requests case by case. Its OTC team is available 24 hours a day.
• Luno gives "$50,000 equivalent" as its standard minimum, and it's the only desk here that publishes any way under its own floor: "An initial smaller test trade can be accommodated." Its single-trade limit is $2 million and the desk runs weekdays only.
• Yellow Card puts its figure in its help centre rather than on its marketing site: "In each of the markets, you can get a minimum transaction of 50 000 USD." Naira is one of the nine currencies it lists.
• Quidax tells you to "execute trades above $100,000". Its own FAQ asks "what is the minimum and maximum order amount?" and shows no answer, so that headline sentence is the only figure there is.
• Breet runs a desk and won't name a threshold: "Contact us with the volumes you expect to move, and we'll confirm the current threshold for your currency and asset."
• Binance sets "USD 200,000 or its equivalent" for a manual spot quote. It stopped supporting naira in March 2024, so a Nigerian user can't settle into a bank account there anyway.
• Bybit quotes $20,000 to $2 million on one service and $50,000 to $10 million on another, and hedges whether a Nigerian user can reach either.

The comparison above is live, so it moves during the day and Daya Pro won't always sit at the top of it. That's a different thing from a fee. A published fee is printed on a page and you can check it before you commit; a rate moves while you're reading. So compare the fees on the figures below, and compare the price in the live comparison at the moment you actually trade.

Why do OTC desks set a $50,000 floor?

An OTC desk prices your trade by hand. A dealer takes the whole amount, works out where they can cover it, quotes you one price for the lot and then goes and hedges it. That work costs about the same whether you're selling $5,000 or $500,000, so desks set a floor below which a trade doesn't pay for the dealer's time.

What the floor buys you, when you clear it, is a short list of real things:

1. One price for the entire amount, agreed before anything moves, so the price can't drift while your order fills.
2. No slippage. Slippage is what you lose when your order is bigger than the best price on the screen and the rest of it fills at worse prices.
3. A settlement date you've agreed. Luno publishes up to two working days at no extra cost; Breet says naira, cedis, dollars, USDT and USDC land the same day the trade executes.
4. A named person handling it, which matters when something needs chasing.

None of that is worth much on $5,000, which is the honest reason the desks don't want the trade. At that size the cost of a bad price is tens of dollars, not thousands, and an order book handles it without anyone picking up the phone.

What does a Nigerian OTC desk charge?

Not one of the Nigerian OTC desks publishes a number. Obiex promises "the most competitive spreads and pricing in the market". Quidax offers "a single competitive rate". Yellow Card says large trades cost "a fraction of the cost" of an open exchange. Breet promises "volume-based pricing that improves as your trade size grows". Four adjectives, no figures.

That has a practical consequence worth sitting with. You can't compare two desks on price before you contact them, because neither one has told you what it charges. Quidax is the only one that has ever explained the mechanism in public, in a blog post from October 2024: it uses "a spread-based model" where "the difference between the buy and sell price represents the fee", set by market conditions and trade size.

So on a desk, the only way to learn the price is to ask for a quote. Ask two, and price the same trade on an order book at the same time, so you've got something to hold the quotes against.

Where does Daya Pro fit?

Daya Pro is a USDT/NGN order book that takes orders from $1, and it charges 0% to take a price and 0.05% to post one. An order book is a live list of other people's buy and sell prices that you trade against. You can place a market order, which fills now at whatever is on the screen, or a limit order, which sits until somebody meets your price. There's also an intraday credit line, which lets a merchant trade against funds that are still settling. The published numbers are on pro.daya.co.

On the one thing this article is about, Daya Pro is the only venue here that takes the trade. $5,000 is fifty times Daya Pro's minimum and a tenth of the lowest desk floor. On the fee, Daya Pro's 0% taker is cheaper than Quidax's 0.1%, and Quidax is the only other venue on this list that prints an order book fee before you trade.

Where Daya Pro isn't the pick: if you want one agreed price for a genuinely large block, with a dealer who hedges it for you and a settlement date in writing, that's what a desk does and an order book doesn't. Above $50,000 it's worth getting a quote from Obiex, Luno or Yellow Card and comparing it against what the same trade costs on a book. Below that, the question answers itself, because the desks have already said no.

What happens if you sell $5,000 of USDT in a retail app?

Usually it goes through, and the cost shows up in the rate rather than in a fee line. A retail app quotes you one price for the whole amount and earns the difference between that price and what it can buy or sell at. On $5,000 that difference is worth far more than any fee in this article, which is the part most comparisons get backwards.

The arithmetic is quick. A 0.1% fee on a $5,000 trade is $5. One per cent of difference between two apps' prices on the same $5,000 is $50. So the price is worth ten times the fee, and every further one per cent is another $50. An app that charges you nothing on the trade is earning on the rate instead, and that's true of every app in this market.

Which means the only comparison that tells you anything is the naira. Quote the same sale in two apps, within a minute of each other, and compare the naira each one says you'll receive. We've written up why the quoted USDT/NGN rate is so often wrong in why the USDT/NGN rate you're quoted is often wrong, and the fee side of the order books in the best USDT/NGN order books for P2P merchants.

Which venues will take a $5,000 USDT sale today?

Three routes will take it, and all three publish a price you can check before you sell. That last part matters more than it sounds, because most of the market doesn't.

1. Breet's ordinary sell flow. Breet charges by size, and $5,000 is exactly where its cheapest tier starts: 1.5% up to $999, 1% from $1,000 to $4,999, and 0.5% from $5,000 up, plus the network fee to send the coin. The figures are in the FAQ on each coin's own page, such as breet.io/tether, rather than in the body copy.
2. Daya Pro's order book. 0% to take a price, 0.05% to post one, from a $1 minimum, with market and limit orders on USDT/NGN.
3. Quidax's order book. 0.1% whether you take or post, with the maker side at 0.07% on USDT/NGN and USDC/NGN. Naira out costs a flat 200 naira, plus 50 naira stamp duty on amounts from 10,000 naira. Its fee page was last updated on 2 October 2026.

A note on reading Quidax's number: 0.07% is the maker rate, which is what you pay for posting a price and waiting. If you're selling into the book to get it done now, you're the taker and you pay 0.1%. Any quoted trading fee is worth checking for which side it applies to before you plan around it.

Is Luno OTC available to someone in Nigeria?

Luno's Nigerian domain serves a South African desk page. luno.com.ng/otc returns the same content as luno.com/otc, and that content doesn't mention Nigeria, naira or NGN anywhere. It describes "seamless ZAR" execution, quotes the desk's hours as 8:00 to 16:00 South African time, and its only community link goes to a South African group.

The hours convert to 7am to 3pm Nigerian time, weekdays, with the desk closed at weekends. The $50,000 minimum and the $2 million single-trade limit are on that page and look like they apply across the business. What isn't on the page is whether a Nigerian user can settle a trade in naira. So if you're planning around Luno's desk from Lagos, that's the question to put to Luno before you commit to anything.

What should you check before you move a trade to a new venue?

There are six questions worth asking, and the first two are the ones that actually decide it. Nigerian merchants have had to change venue twice in two years, so the venue holding your money matters as much as the price it quotes.

1. What is the smallest trade it will take, stated as a figure on its own pages rather than described as "high volume"?
2. Is the price published before you trade, as a percentage with the side it applies to, or will you only learn it when you ask for a quote?
3. Can it settle in naira to a Nigerian bank account, and has it said so in writing?
4. When is it open? Two of these desks run weekday business hours, which is no use for a Sunday evening trade.
5. How long does settlement take, and what does a delay cost you if the rate moves while you wait?
6. If you quote the same trade here and in one other place, which one actually hands you more naira?

That last one is the only test that can't be gamed. For a bigger trade, our write-ups of the alternatives to Quidax OTC and the alternatives to Obiex go through the same ground desk by desk. This article isn't tax advice, and it isn't a recommendation to trade. Check what you owe before you sell.