Gov of Ukraine Picks Stellar to Help Build National Digital Currency - CBDC
Well here we are 4th of January 2021 and the CBDC race is heating up!
Recall a CBDC is a Central bank digital currency
What has been done thus far in regard to CBDC in Ukraine? The National Bank of Ukraine has been researching the possibility of CBDC implementation since 2017. “The Ministry of Digital Transformation is working on creating the legal environment for the development of virtual assets in Ukraine,”. They went through several steps of "hryvnia" Project. Including several pilot
What have they done? Ukraine Central Banks selected Stellar for the foundation of its CBDC, and has created a private version of the Stellar Blockchain and run several in depth levels of project testing for their CBDC.
What is the population of Ukraine? According to Worldmeters the Ukraine population in 2020 was 43,660,242. Not huge from a country scale when compared to a huge City like Mexico City with 21MM+. The population is enough to demonstrate the ease of which a country could transition from fiat paper currency to CBDC. It can show how blockchains scale to this level and how fast transaction can take under heavy loads. I assume other countries will be monitoring this for lessons learned.
When is the launch? Hints at a go live timeframe in 2021! Yep sometime this year.
What other countries are working on CBDC efforts? According to BIS of the 63 countries surveyed most are exploring CBDC's
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2019/12/13/the-current-landscape-of-central-bank-digital-currencies/
More info on which countries are down the CBDC path - https://jonasgross.medium.com/cbdc-pioneers-which-countries-are-currently-testing-a-retail-central-bank-digital-currency-49333be477f4
What can we learn? How its scales? How well the citizens adopt the use? How fast transactions complete vs current systems in place.
What we won't learn? What goes on in the back rooms with AI/ML for tracking Citizens etc.
Summary - We will see lots of starts, false starts and some potential failures along the CBDC path in 2021. If it's 2021 you better be running!
