The president is also crazy: the new process of CBDCs in the Bahamas, El Salvador, Nigeria

Image source @ Visual China

The Central American Caribbean Strait Islands nation of the Bahamas announced in October 2020 that it would issue the world's first CBDC, and a year later, the African nation of Nigeria also announced that it would release the continent's first CBDC project, the "e-naira" wallet.

On October 25, according to the Financial Times, Nigerian President Buhari and others announced that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the central bank of Nigeria, began operating e-naira, which is also the first CBDC in Africa. Buhari said that on the day of the launch, nearly 400,000 new wallets were opened in dozens of countries, with 12,500 transactions and a total transaction amount of 46.3 million nairas (about 720,000 yuan).

The government expects e-Naira to improve nigeria's current weakness and promote financial inclusion for millions of citizens. President Buhari said e-naira could boost Nigeria's GDP by $29 billion over the next decade.

Nigeria is currently Africa's largest economy and has abundant oil resources, with nearly 200 million people, but more than half of the estimated people are not banked. Nigeria's e-naira wallet is more like the African version of Alipay, which currently accounts for 95% of cash transactions in circulation.

This year, Nigeria announced a ban on cryptocurrency trading, and e-naira looks more like a bearer of fiat currencies, facilitating transactions and transfers.

Let's take a look at the development of the world's first CBDC.

Chainde mentioned the Sand Coin Scheme in the Bahamas in a previous article. As the first country to actively promote the development of CBDCs, the Bahamas is mainly to get rid of the dollar hegemony. See Previous Report: Is Sand Dollar the World's First CBDC in the Bahamas? The war for power in the emerging countries begins.

Subsequently, developing countries followed suit, and in October of the same year, Chia Serey, director of the Central Bank of Cambodia, announced that Bakon planned to complete a trial run and had issued a digital currency called "Bakong Coin".

However, according to the Japan Economic News Network, the current CBDC sand coins in circulation in the Bahamas are still less than 1% of cash, and data from the Central Bank of the Bahamas shows that as of the end of August, the number of sand coins in circulation was 272,500 Bahamian dollars, accounting for only 0.05% of the circulation. The main reason is that public awareness is not in place and public awareness remains low.

The Bahamas said that the current low popularity is mainly due to the fact that it has not been promoted, but mainly in the improvement of technology.

Although it is a sand coin issued in the vision of getting rid of the control of the US dollar, the Current technological breakthrough of the Bahamian government seems to have encountered a bottleneck, and in February this year, it was reported that MasterCard would cooperate with a Bahamian startup to issue cards compatible with the "sand coin".

If this news is true, the Sand Coins of the Bahamas can also be said to be "lonely".

In contrast, el Salvador is advancing in a high-profile manner. Popular President Nayib Bukele announced that after passing the Bitcoin Act, the Chivo wallet was launched as scheduled in September, causing downtime on the day of its release, and the president was forced to teach online how to download the e-wallet.

At present, the Total Number of Bitcoins held by the Salvadoran government totals 1120 pieces, and in just half a month, the government has made $4 million in just half a month, excluding the promise of free distribution to new users. For details, please refer to the previous report of ChainDede: [Chaindede Exclusive] Holding 1120 BTC, the President of El Salvador made $4 million, and the bitcoin proponent can be said to be one of the Twitter celebrities in the crypto industry after Tesla CEO Musk, and each of Bukele's tweets has a significant impact on the industry.

However, the biggest publicity in El Salvador is that it is not simply the launch of the wallet, the Chivo wallet is just a medium, and the government platform is Bitcoin, not a simple "electronic fiat currency". After each of the president's tweets, the Bitcoin market also fluctuated greatly, reaching an all-time peak of $68,000 on the 9th.

The main goal of the Salvadoran government is to facilitate international remittances, especially the large number of labor remittances to the United States, which means that the Salvadoran government may be closer to the United States, where the country's 650,000 people contribute a total of 24% of the country's GDP.

On the contrary, Japan, the United States, and Europe are still stuck in the stage of paper talk. The United States is currently under pressure not to take a stance, please refer to the previous report of the chain: the Federal Reserve and MIT's "Hamilton" project revealed: Can the digital dollar start next month? Europe has been making reports.

According to the chain to observe, Japan has also been waiting to see the movements of the European Union and the United States and stagnated, before the United States did not express its position, Japan should be unlikely to announce the issuance of digital yen, the project side can be said to have been touching the fish, specific can refer to the chain to get yesterday's article: [Chain to get exclusive] The British CBDC is expected to be released at the end of 2020, and the crypto market has reached a new high.

[This article was originally published in Chainde, authorized by Titanium Media App, author: Maori Goro]