National currencies on the Blockchain? Africa leads the way.
Coinify´s co-founder Mark Højgaard has been reviewing in a Forbes article and also on Coinify´s own blog the case for putting national currencies on a blockchain.
(Image Source: NASA)
As a matter of fact, last year Tunisia became the first country in the world to put its national currency on a blockchain, with Senegal being the second one. Still in Africa, the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) is testing a smart contract on an Ethereum-based private blockchain network including the Payments Association of South Africa, Financial Services Board, Strate and some of the country's major banks, namely Investec Bank, ABSA, Rand Merchant Bank and Standard Bank (source).
It is no surprise to me that Africa is leading the way in blockchain adoption, as the continent has an interesting track record in leaving the West behind as an early adopter of disruptive technologies with high societal impact. By and large, Africa moved from no telecommunications infrastructure straight into deploying pervasive mobile phone networks, skipping altogether the (now obsolete) landline phone phase.
Other countries, such as Singapore, are also involved in pilot projects to put fiat on a blockchain.
Leaving aside ideological reservations "blockchains are tools to decentralize processes and remove power from central governments, etc, etc, etc", I feel that blockchain/smart contract adoption by governments will be beneficial to society as the inherent efficiency/transparency gains will benefit consumers and reduce the room for corruption.
Palestine is considering getting their own national crypto aswell. And some others smaller countries too. It will be crypto bonanza countries adoption once it starts. I will predict the gulf states accepting them as a national currencies. Read my words.
Interesting. Can you post links to relevant articles?
https://www.neowin.net/news/state-of-palestine-mulling-crypto-currency-of-its-own
The question is how will they print money :)
hopefully they won't ...there will be a fixed amount of cryptocurrency and the government won't be able to print more and more ...like they do now
I have to argue. There are coins with unlimited supply (POS coins) e.g. ETH PIVX.
agree ..but it would be much more complicated to, just print money in surprise, like some african governments do now
in any case it would be an improvement
This is not complicated. Just change some code in coin code.
I am not such a big expert about how cryptocurrencies work and how complicated it to create inflation in those coins ..but if it is so easy as you say and the coin won't be decentralized and limited in number like the bitcoin - than all my enthusiasm is for nothing :(
I believe Ethereum is unlimited, but only in the sense that more tokens are created as people build applications on top of their platform. Its necessary in order for new applications to be delivered. They don't simply create new tokens out of thin air. Now if they were unscrupulous people then I guess it's always possible, but the entire blockchain would lose credibility and fall apart.
It would be amazing to see an economic boom in Africa because of blockchain technology.
in many of these emerging markets there are more cell phones than people. Banks cannot afford to serve them so crypto- currency is the only option and the best option. Two farmers can trade on the spot with no bank, no one taking a cut or getting interest on the bridge credit, zero cost and takes seconds. The real value of crypto has just scratched the surface. I don't know what the % is, but I'm guessing that over 80% of the world do not have bank accounts. It feels like dark times when you watch the news and see what the Central Banks are doing, but is that out of desperation because they know they are about to get bypassed on a global basis. Feels like there is a light at the end of the tunnel to me.
Cryptos will just make it easier and more fair for everyone. When you own your own money its so much more easy to make transactions. Cryptos might just level out the playing field, and we will see who are to blame of too large differences between wealth. Its not the common mans fault. Its the banks and governments.
I think that is a very good news as many african countries went bankrupt as a result of their corrupt leaders printing more and more money
Very interesting - nice to see African countries taking an initiative in this. I'm assuming that is mostly the Ethereum blockchain that is being used due to the automatic presence of smart contracts. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain is rapidly becoming more mainstream - I love it!
This is very exciting news for blockchains and the implementation of crypto
The financial market will be flooded with all sorts of coins. Cryptocurrency is still at the beginning of the road
A country should adopt Litecoin as a currency. It's very stable.
Wow! That's huge !