Bitcoin Forum

Which country would be the first to eliminate fiat and convert to crypto fully?  My guess is China...

I don't think it would really fully eliminate the fiat money especially abruptly. There will always be people who could not adopt to new innovations and technology and I am sure any country can be aware of this. India has just started to demonetize the bulk of their paper money but it has not yet totally done so.

As for China, the government can be planing to have their state-sponsored cryptocurrency just like what Russia is planning though I doubt if it can be as successful as Bitcoin which is decentralized and not under the control of the government. However, a state-sponsored crypto can be successful within the country.

I think no country will fully adopt crypto currency and eliminate fiat in their market...That's very difficult to implement since bitcoin requires technology not everyone can adopt unless the country is really that rich to be able to provide the technology needed for bitcoin.

there will be no country will do that fure sure,
if they really did it,doesn't that mean they will be our slave ?
we're the one who's controlling their economy,deflation or inflation.
Bitcoin and Fiat need to coexist,because Bitcoin always be a cryptocurrency and Fiat will always be a real currency.
we will never know about Bitcoin value if we don't have a Bitcoin,

Just stick to Bitcoin goal,it's used as a payment point and anonymity.
it will never replace Fiat no matter what

I think this is still a long ways down the road. We should not get ahead of ourselves, but rather ask the question of what MAJOR CITY would be the first to eliminate fiat and convert to crypto fully?

My view is it would be a progressive city given conservatives generally embrace change late and liberals tend to do so early. Therefore, pick the most liberal/leftist cities in the world and you have your answer.

Some big countries of course such USA, Japan and Korea. These countries are really good on technology and if you ever go to that country, you can see that their life is much upgraded with high technology. I'm sure in the next 5-15years, people on that country will adopt a digital money to make their life more easier.

No government in the world would totally eliminate their fiat and go for bitcoin. Bitcoin is not sustainable and they will also need to convert it to USD to be able to do trading or business with other country that don't accepts bitcoin. Likelihood to happen is 0. Legalization or adoption of bitcoin is one thing,


LOL. The country that will not go for crypto is those big country you mentioned, They are superpowers and getting bitcoin as main currency will do more harm to them than good. Do you think that Central banks around the world will agree do this? Highly doubt it. What we can do is take advantage of both fiat and bitcoin and they can exist mutually.

Your guess is as good as mine with china though it's unlikely that even china would go full crypto. I don't think any country can actually do that however advanced they are. We still have a long way to go if we'll expect crypto to be a countries exclusive currency

yes of course an advanced countries will be the one who apply and adopt it fully. like japan in asia for example , i believe it could be the major candidate to achieve it . i just don't think it is really necessary fiat to be eliminated , bitcoin and a conventional currency could exist side by side.

just the way how people transform consider bitcoin as their primary currency and fiat as secondary currency.

 Don't think it would really fully eliminate the fiat money especially abruptly. There will always be people who could not adopt to new innovations and technology and I am sure any country can be aware of this. India has just started to demonetize the bulk of their paper money but it has not yet totally done so.

Why would an authoritarian country like China give up control of their legal tender to a currency they do not control? What good would that bring to their government?

No government is stupid enough to give up monetary control. To control the money is to control the people.

If Zimbabwe can find a way to provide mobile internet services to everyone in the country and be able to educate them, I think they would stop using cash and move over to Bitcoin. They have faced a lot of challenges with their economy and they are accustomed to using other currencies to replace their local reserve currency.

The next country might be Kenya, because they are already used to digital money in the form of M-Pesa. ^smile^

It will definitely not be China, because they need 100% control over their citizens and Bitcoin does not provide that to them.

Haha. Why China? Because of the mining prowess? Perhaps, but when you take practicality into account, fiat won’t be eliminated anytime soon; maybe never. If fiat does get eliminated by Bitcoin it is still too early to decide which country will make the shift first. I mean Japan has a lot of vendors and merchants of accepting Bitcoin. China has great Bitcoin mining power. But as the year progresses more countries are accepting Bitcoin. So it is nearly impossible to decide which country would eliminate fiat first … if they ever do.

I personally believe in a world where fiat is used and Bitcoin is used more than it is now. Such a world would be good. I personally don’t want a world where fiat is eliminated completely. Fiat and Bitcoin are opposites that complement each other. They work better together.

According to me, at the inverse of what you are saying, that will not be at all China, for the simple reason that they have no incentive to do so, and because they would lose a monetary power that needed great efforts from them in order to possess it. My call is that it will rather be a little country, wanting to attract investors and become known worldwide. I will not make a guess on the exact country, since it can be so many.

I do not think any country will ever do that.
A government needs to be in controle of its currency.
Or at least bind it to a major currency that is managed through the market situations.
Giving the financial faith of your country completely out of your hands, that would not be a wise decision.

There are many countries that are ahead in terms of usage and acceptance but that doesn't mean that they will also be the ones to fully embrace cryptos in the future. Much benefit must be derived from it, without the government losing control of the hold on the economy. So even if we see countries like Japan, Switzerland, USA or South Korea leading the way with welcoming crypto currency, there is still too much gap between digital currency and our fiat money.

The one who has control over the financial system owns the country. It knew the founders of the Federal reserve system of the United States. They even went further and were able to own the world. Who would refuse such an opportunity? I even think that bitcoin will never be recognized as a currency.

I think that no country would try to do its so.Only micro nations which don't have a strong currency and which suffer from huge economic crisis might try it just like Liberland.They might not have any other option than that.But i don't think that other nations would try to do so.They might have both fiat currency and crypto currency side by side.Otherwise,they might have to face serious consequences when a power failure occurs or when internet connection stops temporarily.So,no country would do like that.

I don't think any country would adapt to bitcoin only because of it's volatility.
But I guess some 3rd world countries who have several financial issues could somewhat pump their financial status if they used bitcoin for a while, as it is steadily gaining value and potential. Ofcourse they shouldn't go all in because if bitcoin gets a decrease in it's value, that country would likely be doomed.

that would be too impossible for now we know that bitcoins is not stable and it is not good to use as a mode of payments in real jobs if fiat will be eliminate .China will be more advance in making new with bitcoins but to make crypto as fully use in a government is impossible now.

No country would ever do that lol. What control would they have over the currency?

I don't think that there will be a country that will convert to crypto fully because how can they sustain the needs of their growing population if they don't have a stable and unlimited supply of one of the most important in a country and that is money. Cryptocurrencies are not enough to supply all the people in their country and that is one of the biggest disadvantage of having crypto and it will become a very risky part for them to just convert and eliminate fiat money.

That's not going to happen for quite some time. Think about how hard currency is held on for so long. Companies like PayPal could have shut down the hard currency markets years ago and it never happened the same thing is going to be true for Bitcoin. It is almost impossible to shut down fiat altogether.

It will only make the things more complicated,  and removing fiat and jumping to crypto is not a joke. It will take  years maybe hundreds before they can fully eliminate fiat. Crypto is only a substiture payment when somebody dont have the  main and widely use which is the fiat.

i don't think government will let crypto currency take over the fiat system because fiat system is the only way they can make money. those curruption they can take it on cryptocurrency because it will have a history at their transaction each address has their own private key or what we called btc address so that will be enough reason for the government won't take crypto fully and disregard the fiat system.

The problem with bitcoin for governments is that they would not have any control on them. Imagine every country with only one currency that is not controllable, unless you hold a huge share of it, your country would be vulnerable to inflation. Besides, collecting taxes would be a disaster, as bitcoin tries to keep anonymity of its users.

Yeah me too. With the number of miners they have there, the government is sure to be taking advantage of this imnovation. I think china has probably the most miners right now and btc is already being used by regular people and some businesses. But i'm.not sure if they can go full crypto there though without having fiat available for its citizens

Where the politicians are not required peoples money to lead their country, in that place maybe this rule can be applicable otherwise w can not see this rule in any country. No governament will allow this rule if they not get any revenue. The politicians are sitting there to make money, so we this could be not possible in real world.

May be some of the micronations such as Liberland or Sealand. And if I am not wring, Liberland has already declared Bitcoin as the national currency. but none of the major nations are going to accept Bitcoin (or any of the altcoins) as the national currency.

I have been thinking of asking this question too! Likely india may be the first country to abandoned fiat and adopt crytocurrency. My view was motivated by how India has accepted crytocurrency idea without reservation or discrimination. Japan may be the second to also abandoned fiat for bitcoin. This is a personal view .

I don't see any country doing that not now or in the future at least not adopting bitcoin because it will mean abandoning their identity, culture and heritage and that's what currency of a country represents and not just as a medium of exchange. If China should abandon fiat as you have proposed, then they should also force other countries to accept for their international trade which is most likely impossible to achieve and the moment one country  currency is not acceptable for international trade, then it begins to lose value.

Everyone can make their own prediction, but China is probably one of last countries in my list, the rulling party rules with an iron fist, they are not going to let their fiat to disappear, it needs to be a small country with high standards of living that suffers an economic crisis, like you see there are not many candidates available, a possibility is Iceland but they hate bitcoin for some strange reason.

My guess is India because they are the one in IT who are willing IT they are looking toward bitcoin. If bitcoin cross around the world they will come to the power then India will take action against fiat currencies to make a crypto currency in the place of fiat money. So i would like to mention India because India is the one who are willing to have more skills in IT and they are known as IT toppers around the world too.

I don't think that it will happen soon after all, government doesn't want a decentralized currency. If that were to happen they would create their own cryptocurrency for them to still be able to control it. The first countries that might do this is China and Japan sincd they are the first to implement laws pertaining to use of crypto and they are also the pioneer countries to legalize bitcoin and crypto.

In my opinion, this wont happen. None of the governments will do that.If they eliminate fiat currencies definitely it will affect the economic growth of the country because the economic growth of the country will happen if they collect tax from the people, which is not possible if they use cryptocurrencies.

It'll never happen. By forcing debts and taxes to be accepted in national currency, governments have control over a sizeable portion of the national economy. If they converted to cryptocurrency, they might profit in the mid term as cryptocurrencies flourish. But they wouldn't be able to control the currency. So, in the case of economic turmoil, war, natural disasters...... things could get very ugly. Fiat currency can be used to bring stability during such times.

Fiat is better than crypto for some things.

Say someone wants to sell their car. How do they structure transactions to avoid fraud? Loans can be difficult with crypto. There are areas where crypto is not well suited.

The time it takes transactions to confirm can complicate buying/selling. Crypto also requires access to electronics and the internet. Fiat has the advantage of not needing anything more than a piece of paper which gives it an advantage over crypto in some areas.

You are right in that there are some things fiat is just simply better for.

However, I think you are forgetting about paper wallets which is the exact same thing as fiat.

North Korea because their fiat is already worthless and cryptocurrencies are only used by criminals like Kim Hong Un. Nah but seriously, probably a smaller country. Wasn't there a tiny island that's currency is bitcoins but it means nothing because the island's only inhabited by one family?

May be you are right. North Korea will step ahead to replace their fiat with crypto currencies forever. Besides I think Japan will also increase the usage of the digital currency and may someday replace fiat with digital currencies altogether. Let’s see what is waiting for us.

I think there are some countries which are planning to make a digital currency and make their citizens use it. I can't remember fully the country but I know I've read it here.

Also North Korea, I think will not be the first one, I think there will be others first like maybe Japan, which us kind of a high tech country that will make their first step to this digital currency, but first I think we really need to make bitcoin a digital currency that can be used in instant and free transactions.

It depends on whether its possible to print fake paper wallets. Paper fiat is difficult to counterfeit. A paper wallet could be much easier to forge which could complicate things if people ever tried to utilize crypto the same way they do fiat.

My guess is Japan, they are the ones that are farther away in term of adoption and I think they are going to realize soon enough that bitcoin is way better than their currency that keeps being devalued by the Japanese government, I do not think it is going to happen soon but it will happen eventually.

Greece almost do that, remember when they almost bankrupt and their people change Euro to Bitcoin. but they got problem because they still need to use bank to do online transfer but almost all of their bank already closed.

I think this is definitely not going to happen. Why..? Becuase of Politics. Governments for sure will impose taxes, laws, and regulations whenever Bitcoin or other cryptos are fully accepted *Legally* worldwide. It will definitely affect the personal interests of the powerful people. Once, Crypto fully takes over then it would lead to the centralization of Bitcoin, Anonymity will be lift and etc.

I don't think any major or even any minor country would discriminate their fiat currency at all just for the reason of adopting the digital currency. There is a risk in using a fully digital financial system which might cause a loss of millions of dollars. A Recent example of Somalia is a good example of what could happen if the internet is disrupted.

* Somalia's internet outage costing country $10 million a day (https://phys.org/news/2017-07-somalia-internet-outage-country-million.html).

Thus, I don't think any country will do that even after several years. Exception: The Sealand.

Same thought here./
I'm in the third world and I know how bad the internet connection here and the service is so frustrating. The speed is just running in daytime at 30-100 kbps average and the internet fee is so high. We all know that the idea of blockchain is good and if this will be implemented then the third world country will be behind in this technology because people here especially in the province barely have a smartphone and good signal. And this will be a cause when the implementation of cryptocurrencies will go to the congress. We are still in a long ride.

That's the real issue here how government handle the said matter politics still influence whichever country that will try to adopt this currency and for sure just in case it will happen they will change it up being centralized for them to be in control.

It would be hard for an entire country to eliminate their fiat currency and rely totally on any cryptocurrency. Every country has people that simply couldn't move to crypto, at all.

That's true.  You make some excellent points.  It would be nearly impossible...

It's possible, but only an extremely economically depressed country would bother. Why? Cryptos, at least as we know them, can aid and abet capital flight, which is the bane of all goes. What you don't want is a way for someone to quickly, cheaply and anonymously move value outside of your country. If a gov were to issue a coin, it would look pretty much like the ACH system in the US, or Ripple for a direct Crypto comparison. Transactions would have to be reversible; everyone would be identified, and fees would go to the central authority as there is no need for decentralized consensus.

We will be using cryptos mainstream, soon. They just need to make it so seamless that it is indistinguishable from using electronic cash, that is a debit card. This is already the case honestly; I only keep Crypto, and with my Shift card no one knows that I am spending coin when I swipe at a point of sale.

No country will fully switch to crypto currencies where they have no control over the cash flow. Aside from some failed states and civil war countries like Somalia where the official fiat lost almost all its value and the war lords need to laundry their bloody money and could use the privacy of crypto currencies.

I don't see any country taking over a crypto currency instead of any Fiat. What we will see is the technology beeing adopted to a lot of Fiats and banking systems. The crypto coins will grow and exist in a side market hand in hand with the official fiat.

None, if a country using decentralized currency then the economic can ruined, Fiat is very important to keep the country economic balance and it need to be supervised and controlled so there are no big inflation, big inflation can caused the citizen economic situation become disrupted

I love this idea actually but maybe even a whole city can be too big enough to fully convert into cryptocurrency. Maybe we could start with a certain community where people would really be using their coins for daily transactions but this can really be a big problem with Bitcoin as many are really holding on to it expecting that it can rise further.

First country, my guess. Russia. This could be their trick up the sleeve.

I don't think so any country will eliminate the fiat and start using cryptocurrencies as its national currency, no government will allow to make decentralized currencies (whose transactions are anonymous) as their national currency. There is no other choice other than fiat for government, well nothing is impossible but this seems difficult that fiat will be replaced.

What msalah is the value of bitcoin that has not been stable, so I do not think there is a country that really remove the fiat to be replaced with crypto, maybe the country is facing the economic crisis was not possible to remove the existing fiat to replace it with crypto to overcome the crisis problems that Faced, at least the country will legalize crypto, but not to replace the fiat that is already the currency of the country, because the worry is when the value of crypto drastically decreased of course the country will face a more severe crisis, I think between fiat and Crypto must go side by side.

There are many islands that have good standards of living and that have very low populations, however many of those islands use the dollar as their currency so maybe when the dollar begins to get more unstable as the economy of the United States worsen then that could be the time that some of those small countries decide to accept bitcoin as their official currency.

Maybe Mauritous,only one place where ico is legal,but thay have rules.Any major country,national currency is fundament of independence

If there will be one, my guess is Japan. It is a Japanese who started bitcoin in the first place. Plus almost every single person in Japan knows how to operate a computer or mobile phone. There are lot's of countries even if they use bitcoins as their official money, not everyone have an access to it.

I think fiat money will still be used in china country. It needs legality and deep thinking if a country wants to use bitcoin completely. Bitcoin is not necessarily safe and practical for payment ... bitcoin prices are always changing and security is often bitcoin attacked by hackers .. it becomes a basic thought to set bitcoin as currency .. may be more suitable bitcoin be an investment ... long term for Earn profits.

Its impossible for this thing to happen on which a certain would decide to eliminate their local fiat currency switching fully into crypto.Its impossible to think of for this thing to happen because a local fiat is somehow shows the sovereignty of a certain country which it do shows its power and also theres no country would decide to make trade-ups on local fiat-crypto which means its really a complicated thing to think off.

I don't think any country would do that as long as there's interdependence between countries for various goods, commodities, metals, minerals, gasoline etc. It would be hard for the countries adopting cryptocurrency as sole currency for everything in their countries to trade with the countries the economies of which are absolutely dependent or based on fiat. So the possibility of the elimination of fiat altogether by any country is rare as long as cryptocurrency is not given recognition by if not all the countries in the world but at least by a majority of countries in the world. Any country which decides to eliminate fiat will still have to be dependent on USD as they have to now for foreign trade.

This can be seen among any of the Asian countries at the earliest. If this didn't take place in an Asian country then some small country around the world will go completely on digital currency. Right now Switzerland is completely in plans of switching to digital currency. Let's wait an see the reality.

I also think that it is impossible seeing that China is strongly against Bitcoin Mining I don't see that they will be the first country to operate in a Cryptocurrency only country. Also have you seen their population? Having at least a billion citizens in a country does not really help China become the first country to become paperless because it would take time for all of their citizens to fully understand Cryptocurrency, also the availability if the internet is also mandatory if your want to enter in that kind of implementation.

No country will ever, ever do it. They'd be throwing their economy away as it would basically stop working. If they can't control their currency then they can't control anything else either. It would be a right old mess.

And there's no real reason to put their fiat on a blockchain either. It all rubs along adequately as it is.

UI think it will be Japan or another country from Asia. Technology is one of the best and moest innovative in Japan. They will continue to the second step to replace fiat money by crypzocurrencies.

Either USA, South Korea, Japan and Russia. Their technology and living in these country are the best and full of digital technology. I mean, i'm sure these country will use digital money someday like crypto or other online currencies and we can deny that our live will become easier too if people around the world start using digital money as the payment.

I doubt that it would be China.  Because they are not that modern compared to Japan.  I do not know, I am just guessing.  I would go for Japan since they are always first on technology.  Bitcoin is firstlegalized there right? 

Denmark, the experts opinion is Denmark will be the first cashless country.  They will replace paper money by technology.

Don't you think they will only create coins to maintain its value like USDT (tether) or in China Yuan which the Yuan token could only have a value of the current price on FOREX.

Fiat money contains historical facts by the way, can crypto developers put George Washington on USDT?

That’s a very difficult question to answer because a country that’s going to fully accept bitcoin as a standard mode of payment is going to be criticised and I think the country’s currency value is also going to go down a bit. So the country must be ready for all these.

There is no country with 100% Internet coverage 100% of the time, with 100% of its citizens owning and carrying all the time devices which can make transactions.

A country with 100% digital currency will leave a lot of citizens out of the economy.

BTW, what makes you thing a crypto-currency issued by a government will not be fiat?

My guess would either be Japan or Korea if ever fiat will be eliminated and converted to cryptocurrencies, because Japan as we all know is one of the most highly technologically advanced countries worldwide so my first thought would be this country. Then maybe Korea because they have invested a lot in the crypto world so I was thinking this is for their future currencies too.

If you have been in Japan, they value history which is why modern technology and cultural infrastructure all sit side by side. We know bitcoin has been adopted by stores in japan already but that might not be enough to dominate entirely. Fiat will be valued by their government. They don't have corrupt government by the way.

I have no doubt in my mind that if bitcoin takes over then we will need to remake the whole economic system, the current system is based on debt that is why those that are able to avoid being indebted during their lives have a much easier life than those that have a ton of debt.

I don’t think so these all problems are in any way created by bitcoins. Though it is little tough to deal with bitcoins but it would not be awkward or stupid to treat bitcoins as a legal currency by any state. Fiat can also be stolen whether it is in bank or in your pocket. In short, bitcoins are worth making a national currency with fiat.

I will go for Sweden maybe. From what i know about them is that they rarely use any cash just cards, and perhaps cuz of that they will do it first. Also about them there was some lines on net that they even wanted to made e-krona there own cryptocoin for Sweden alone but seem this project went down at some point.

some very small country can do this but i think FIAT will not be eliminated

Your point makes sense. Poor countries can take this step to stabilize their economy by making bitcoins a national currency without eliminating their fiat. The total elimination of fiat is only possible in the developed countries where everyone has access to internet because without that, there is no use of having crypto currencies.

There are some countries that accept the US dollar as a parallel currency to their own or in more extreme cases where they have decided to let uncle sam to dictate their economic policy by using the US dollar exclusively, so it is not completely out of the realm of possibility that in an extreme case some citizens decide to use bitcoin as the new currency of their country after a financial crisis.

None. no country will fully use bitcoin. not till we alive. all wars is based on money and religion. so if this comes even close, we can expect a war...

No government would turn to a crypto currency that it cannot control (except by advise of the bankers), but any country with a failed currency like Venezuela to say one will likely see a booming black market and crypto usage.

China is a big country and mining of crypto-currencies is on high level there. But I think Japan is going to be the country which will eliminate fiat and convert to crypto fully. At the beginning of this year Japanese government fully legitimized bitcoin as a currency and store of value. Since then Japanese market of bitcoin became attractive for a wide range of investors and traders. Trading of bitcoin in Japanese yen is 46% of the total volume of bitcoins' trade worldwide, while in US dollars - only 25%.
Japan remains one of the few countries that have adopted bitcoin as cryptocurrency. The country's largest companies, including Peach Airlines and retail giant Bic Camera offer bitcoin as official payment method in the coming months hundreds of thousands of trade enterprises, restaurants, bars, cafes and shops, is also expected to integrate bitcoin. To me it tells that Japan is in a one step to fully convertation.

there’s actually no country that’s going to accept bitcoin fully, it can only accept it as a major means of
alternative payment through some selected payment channels.

It does not matter if the government of Japan is not corrupt they have engaged in all kind of weird experiments with their currency and currently they are the most indebted country of the world, so even if they have good intentions they have done a horrible job.

This may be Russia or the Philippines, can not be China, China has begun to supervise the work

I think there is none at all because Fiat money symbolizes a nation and that is their identity when it comes to currency so eliminating it is so impossible, it is just like killing a culture that lives for more than how many centuries.

Even China will not take away their Fiat because of digital currency because there is still a real world and we need a real money instead of a virtual one, but we can't really tell what will be the future for digital currencies maybe, just maybe.

I don't think it is possible for any country in the world to eliminate fiat money totally and convert to using crypto-currency fully in the country, as there are always a transaction cost for using crypto-currency to make payment, if I have to pay a few cents more whenever I purchase just a drink, hamburger or other small items, the miner fees would cost me tons of money in the long run.

Understood... you make great points... thank you kindly.... Huck

Interesting... I didn't know that about Sweden.  Thanks for sharing.... perhaps you are correct... only time will tell.... Huck

I haven't really been able to predict it and i also haven't known far or know whether it will happening or not in one country,, but i don't think any country will do that until it removes the fiat and enters crypto completely, maybe could be happening too but i think it's a small possibility.

This will something really interesting to see the first ever country in this world eliminating paper cash and converting it into BTC or any other crypto currency. But it is too early to predict which country will do it first. We can only wait for the right time when this will happen.

probably in my predictions Japan may do this at very first as they are the first country to legalize bitcoins. Hence I am expecting them to do so for obvious reasons.

Not a poor country but a small country, I think a country that has high living standards and that has a population below 250,000 could be the perfect laboratory, but obviously they will have to agree to use bitcoin as their national currency and that can be very hard to swallow especially for governments since they will be giving away their economies to the devs and the miners.

Yeah, even the most modern countries have just legalized bitcoins but have not declared the as their national currency. That’s quite weird to make any digital currency your national currency.

Bitcoins are even better than conventional currencies in many ways but still they don’t meet the criteria of the national currency.

You really think poor countries will be able to eliminate fiat and make bitcoin their mainstream currency? First of all "poor countries" lack technological development. I don't even think they will know what bitcoin is. They must have access to internet 24/7, do you think people from "poor country" will be able to afford access to the internet? Keep that in mind that most "poor country" are facing this misery just because of their corrupted government. And do you think a corrupt government would like bitcoins?

how successful is auroracoin in iceland, does somebody know?

I was going to skip to later in the thread to talk about posts that might be a bit more relevant but you're comment on China being the first country to eliminate fiat and transition to crypto is something I need to touch on.

There is no way that China is going to be the first country to completely eliminate fiat money, especially when their economy is so reliant on fiat to make sure that it can function properly. If you haven't seen their country's economic system, they really, really like to suppress the Yuan so that they can keep making cheap products and pay their people small amounts, even though it may look like it is growing. You can't do that with Bitcoin.

Japan has a higher chance than China.

I don't think a whole country will completely convert to crypto. For this to happen, everyone (even the homeless ones) would need to own a smartphone, with constant internet connection. I think maybe a city, or a city area might completely convert to crypto. I think that ould be some semi large city in China. In China the app WeChat is incredibly popular, and people use it to make payments all the time, they're like almost cashless in some places. That's why I think crypto might take over in places like that. Just might.

That is the problem for a country to convert in cryptocurrency fully because they will have a lot of problem for their citizen because if they want to convert in cryptocurrency then they need to make sure that there is a stable internet connection for the people in their country and every people in their country has a device like smartphone, laptop or computer if they have that then they can transact with bitcoin.

No country will fully eliminate fiat, there is so much things to put on stake, if all the bitcoin whale cooperate then the country will be controlled by them, and the fluctuate price everyday will bring difficulty for the people to do transaction

Correct, bitcoin is great but it needs a huge infrastructure, and in poor countries most people do not have access to electricity or the internet and this make extremely difficult to get access to bitcoin and a lot less convenient, so like most of the time those that have money are the ones that have earlier access to new technologies.

I think that there is going to take a lot of time before bitcoin becomes the official of a currency, to be honest I do not think that is going to happen any time soon, I think it is a lot more likely that bitcoin is going to become accepted alongside the official currency, something similar to what is happening on Japan, basically you will be able to use your local currency or bitcoin in order to buy anything you need, to me that seems like the best scenario that we are going to see in near the future.

Which country will first do it is hard to tell. But Countries might shift whole to cryptos. But that won't be any famous cryptocurrency that we know. Rather it would be their own. Governments might be legalizing Bitcoin. But still they never want Bitcoin dominance in the market. They can't let an outer currency drive their national market.

I think crypto would not totally eliminate fiat because how can the people who has no capability to access the technology buy something when all they know is fiat as a medium of exchange. Even some people don't have electricity so it's not possible for them to make use of it. Maybe a country that has a smaller population and hi-technology can start the implementation of it by testing it in a small community and then eventually extending the scope of it until such time it will make the whole country use it. I can observe that maybe Japan would the first one to implement this one.

No one! and we should stop thinking that crypto's will eliminate fiat since it is just a legend and just a imaginary talk by a crypto fun kids. And Crypto is just an digital asset that is needed to take care where it belongs and fiat have laws covering on it and it is not easy to eliminate by just a thrend assets.

As of now i dont that there is any country around the world that would willingly eliminate their fiat and make use of crytocurreny. There wasnt even a country yet that legally accepted bitcoin as means of payment for goods and services.
Therefore before we will go on to the discusion on which country would eliminate their fiat and make ise of bitcoin, let us first analyze on which country would be the first to pass a law that says they are already accepting the using of cryptocurrency.

My guess is Japan, maybe after 20 years or so. That would be interesting scenario to look forward to.  ;D

                           I guess you were right. No one knows which country would fully adopt bitcoin first or fully legalize it as their currency, and I certainly believe that it has been discussed by the government if someday it would be happening, so as of now let's just relax and wait for the next years to come, hopefully someday it would be really a good news to all of us, because for now it is still way too impossible that it would happen.

there will be no country really fully eliminate the fiat money. Fiat and Bitcoin are opposites that complement each other. although some countries have welcomed crypto currency but the government can't control it

Maybe Japan will be the first to eliminate fiat and convert to crypto fully since we all know how Japan can be very fast when it comes to technology and Bitcoin in japan is every where nowadays so its possible to happen that one day they will only use crypto as a payment.

Apart from the small micronations such as Talossa and Liberland, I don't think that any of the established nations will declare Bitcoin as their national currency. Because it can lead to many complications. And the high volatility of Bitcoin is another problem.

I agree to that. There is no reason for a decent country to declare bitcoin as their main currency and eliminate the fiat because if they are going to go for bitcoin in full force then they will have a hard time in managing the money that they will have in bitcoin because it will not become easy for them to manage money since the price is not stable and it can drop or increase anytime.

Despite the undoubted interest of countries like Korea and Japan in the technological field, we must not forget that these countries are not isolated from the world context and even if they were willing to make a transition towards the economy based on cryptocurrencies, since these countries are important technology exporters par excellence, they would not be able to carry out their economic transactions with countries that do not accept bitcoin or any other crypto, so the current economic system is undoubtedly attached to the use of fiat money, and more specifically the US dollar, so we will never see a country 100% economically integrated to some crypto currency.

I hope there will be none ever.
Don't wanna pay at Burger King n wait til tx confirms.

Probably no country will ever abandon the fiat system in exchange of cryptocurrency. And it is beneficial for both currency to co-exists, so I see no reason this will happen. There are advantages of using crypto, and there are advantages of using fiat as well. Let us leave it that way.

Yes it is a bit difficult for the country to eliminate the fiat and convert into the crypto currency because a lot of people in the country does exist that they are not aware of the bitcoin and they don’t know the used of the bitcoin so it is the reason that it will be difficult to some extent but as the power and the strength is increasing as the time passing soon it will happen that bitcoin will be the world currency not only the country.

till now for short time zero county but if somethings happen in future Japan will be first then china then korea then spain

I think, only a few countries in Europe could replace fiat, where IT infrastructure is built up in any regions of country.

This is something that I agree, we cannot expect that bitcoin is accepted in a country with millions of people, we need a test subject in order to see if bitcoin is going to work on a large scale, and a country with a small population seems like the best bet, so in my opinion a small country like isolated in an island will be the perfect place, however before that happens I think the issues with the fees needs to be resolved or no country is ever going to adopt bitcoin.

That’s true up to some extent. I don’t think so managing bitcoins will be an issue but bitcoins are limited in number and there are not properties of any single person or a state. So it does not add up if some country really makes them her national currency. National currency criteria are really different.

You never know, we may not be ready yet, but if at some point bitcoin becomes as fast as fiat then I do not see a reason why that could not happen, governments of the world mismanage their economies all the time, so if a country enters in a very serious economic crisis I will not be surprised if their citizens opted to adopt bitcoin instead of rely once again on their government.

China may not eliminate fiat but there is a possibility of China legalising bitcoin in the near future or maybe they are just trying to give preference to their own cryptos ,and trying to eliminate the scammers involved in the society as well. I dont see any other country making any move against crypto currency ,so its hard to say which country would even think about eliminating fiat because I dont see a reason why any country would eliminate their own currency.

Agreed! Bitcoins are there for everyone, anyone who is willing to work hard to change his future in a better way can work with bitcoins. There is no doubt in this fact that bitcoins are not countless and they are not owned by one single person or a state. No state can do this at all because bitcoins are for international use.

At this moment that will be a bad idea, bitcoin is great but there are still many things that need to be resolved before a country is going to adopt bitcoin as their national currency, the two most important are will the lighting network be activated anytime soon? And the second is if there is going to be another fork in November? There may be more but those two are the most important issues.

The first one in remove fiat currencies is probably going to be Japan, it is only going to be possible if their governemnt doesn't regalute cryptos like china did. But i dont think it would be a nice idea to replace fiat currency and paper money, i wouldn't like that, and a good part of the population would not like it too, just because maybe some of them will not be confortable with digital money..

It seems to me that in reality every country that will have the desire to work with the crypto currency will itself try to create its national national crypto currency. But in order to be confident in the future, Balance feat and crypto-currencies will still be preserved, that is, preserving both.

No dumb country would do such thing and I'm really sure of that.Its impossible to replace local fiat itself by crypto knowing  that local fiat signifies or symbolizes a country regarding on its economy and its power.Theres no place for crypto to replace such thing and also government wont really allow that and thinking off that crypto isn't legally regulated on most countries it would really be hard to trade on.

Whether there will be trade of a crypto currency will gain mass character, then I think that financial institutions and all the more the government will do everything to tax every merchant. It's a matter of time and I think that this will soon take up. And of course if the crypto currency is legalized at full rate.

China seems to be going on the opposite direction, with the banning of icos and their closer look to exchanges, it seems they are preparing the field for an outright ban on bitcoin and any cryptocurrency, I’m sorry for the Chinese citizens since any country that closes its doors to new technologies are left behind and they do not receive the benefits of it, that happened to china once and it seems that is going to happen again.

Yeah there will be no country that will be totally shift to crypto and will make their country as a country focused country. Not all the citizens for each country are techie or good in adoption of technology. There are people that will be subject to this upgrade because they doesn't like any digital money and fiat will be forgotten for real. It's also a very risky thing for that country if they'll shift to fully focused in crypto.

The first country to eliminate fiat and convert to crypto fully would be one which has a failed economic system such as Venezuela, where people are looking for and need help desperately, Bitcoin and crypto could be what they need. Just imagine if they turn to crypto and in a few decades everyone there became rich? It is definitely possible!

Alright, so you expect a country with a failing economic conditions to fully adopt a cryptocurrency, let me breakdown how ludicrous that would be for you.

Firstly, countries with failing economic conditions are in these positions for reasons which are NOT caused by FIAT currency. Reasons for these deteriorating economic conditions are mostly corruption, poor trade balances, lack of education and infrastructure and poor policy implementation.

To implement a crypto based economy, and abolish a FIAT currency, you would need to do the following. COVER all national debt, reinvest all national savings, whilst maintaining the dollar value so the working class is not impacted. Restructure all stabilization policy so hyper-inflation/hyper-deflation does not occur, restructure all taxes so the government can operate, find a way to tax transactions, find a way to implement a currency that can transact in seconds not hours.

The above is a VERY SMALL portion of the steps that would be needed. In reality, billions of dollars and years of work would be required, all of which a failing economy does not have.

At the same time, the idea that FIAT currency is going to be left behind is anything but logical. THERE IS NO BENEFIT, HOLDING A COIN DOES NOT MAKE YOU RICH. If everyone in whatever poor country you think is going to adopt this coin purchased Bitcoin two weeks prior, and the news of China came out, you've just essentially ruined the livelihoods of every paycheck to paycheck family in that time as they've lost almost every bit of savings they had as the value dropped.

Prices of goods lag behind that of the currency, don't try and argue prices value will drop at the speed of the coin.

I love Bitcoin Talk but these daily threads and the drones supporting them really trash this economics section of the forums. 

The problem with Venezuela is that it has a big number of people I think for bitcoin to be adopted by a nation the nation needs to be small a few hundred thousand people at most, and that has high standards of living, because bitcoin is not going to be as easy to understand to someone that has never had access to technology, however such a country probably does not need to adopt bitcoin in the first place.

I expect Russia because the people there use cryptocurrency more than paper currency

You could also ask us the following question: "which government would be the first to give up their control?". I don't really expect any government to do that because if they do they can't collect taxes and they are totally placed out of the economy. But if I would have to name a country it would probably be one with hyperinflation right now.

I totally agree with you , Even though roughly 40 percent of citizens have access to traditional banking services, the future of these digital currencies is most bright in what we call “3rd world countries” such as Kenya and Zimbabwe .
Developing countries suffer from the poor banking infrastructures and arduous accessibility of its services, someone familiar with internet usage and who know about Bitcoin will certainly prefer it over any traditional banking system. Furthermore 3rd world  countries are enduring rampant inflation and therefore it makes people want to use other currencies and try to convert it to their local ones , or even completely replace them .

I think this will be a difficult task to do. Check it, looking at the differences in both currencies - bitcoin has so many process before you can have access to it or acquire which is anchored on internet and technology, computers,literacy etc but fiat is just to labour and you are paid. So, I think they could just operate side by side. Optional

Eliminating fiat as a whole is not possible,
Thus no country will come forward to do this.
As fas as considering the acceptance of bitcoins and identifying them legally is considered I think Japan will nake the first move.
Besides it has already started that now at many shops bitcoins are being accepted as payment thus...its not possible to fully eliminate fiat but partial acceptance is legit.

I don't think that will ever happen. Fiat will always exist, because governments will never abandon it. I think that both systems will exist on most countries in a near future. Japan is a good example of it. They even recognize bitcoin as legal tender, so this proves that having both is perfectly possible.

I guess it would be the big developed countries but of course it would not be easy to eliminate or change the fist currency into bitcoin It would take years before it would happen because not everybody adopted the use of bitcoin the country have to introduce it first and educate its country man before they could do so.

No, you must understand that no country that is doing moderately well is going to accept to change the system for something new, people are only going to accept that if they are facing terrible consequences of following the fiat system supported by banks and governments, besides bitcoin is not ready to be adopted by a country that is that big since the population of Russia is probably many times over the amount of bitcoin users.

i think the first county to eliminate fiat and convert to crypto are Russia and Japan, why do i say so? because Russia President Vladimir Putin wants to adopt Blockchain in there country and wants to accept any cryptocurrency on his project. then second why Japan? because in year 2020 Japan will use Virtual Currency as their payment method which is good for their county. they will make their own token. i think J Coin or Japan Coin..

https://cointelegraph.com/news/japan-considers-launching-j-coin-eliminating-cash-before-tokyo-2020-games

Japan i'm tempted to agree but Russia i doubt because they don't entertain crypto-currencies at all especially bitcoin and so i don't see why their government would want to do that at this time though.

There is none, we need to accept the reality that bitcoins is purely to be use on some of our investments so that we could earn fiat or money. Paper money  can easily be use by all people either rich or poor, childrens and adults than bitcoin in which computer literacy are most required. As of now we are in greed to have a huge amount of bitcoin so that we could keep a huge amount of dollars to be use for living.

That's a tough one, a country suffering from hyperinflation. A good guess would be Venezuela, maybe Zimbabwe

japan is good option as we know japan is already approve bitcoin and maybe japan will eliminate fiat and replace it with crypto currency. russia is good too because we know in russia there are many good project was develop and its grow become bigger and maybe japan and russia will be the first country that eliminate fiat. but i guess it still need more time to make a deal with government because government still have control with their economy system and until now i think government from each country still want to try to control crypto currency which they can not do until now.

It is your dream country. A country which only exist on your brain will be the first country to eliminate fiat and use only crypto ;) As you can see, Fiat is a tool for the government to control the people and no way they will use other type of currency instead of their own national fiat, especially crypto. Crypto is not easily to control and if users know how to use appropriately, there will be no chance for the government to control them as well as their tax

No government in which their economy is working is going to give up control but in an extreme case where the country is spiraling out of control I could see a measure like that to be taken, the only issue is that bitcoin is still not ready, bitcoin cannot deal at the moment with a big amount of transactions so they will have to use fiat or the country will have to be very small.

It is very possible for a country to do without paper or coins and if anything its strangely preferable for the government to eliminate the population's small change.  It would require spendable disposible usb type units for little amounts, really it reduces costs Im sure its feasible.  That they are able to tax them more easily and restrict free movement of capital which is roughly how central banks work.

The obvious answer here is Venezuela, not by choice but as a tail end consequence of its civil war.   Zimbabwe never rescinded its own money properly, it was just was of no use in exchange so dollars became the default

There is no point to adopt a cryptocurrency that is used by a country that can be changed at will and that you cannot access the source code to see if there is any backdoor in the code, it needs to be a crypto like bitcoin, that has a limit on the amount of coins that are ever going to exists and that has its code open for anyone to see and evaluate.

Probably the country with the least to lose but then again they are probably already buying BTC on the lows. So probably a big government then so they can get people to convert their fiat money into Bitcoin.

Probably that country it will be the first one in which there will no more need for money. We love and depend on technology but we are unable to trust in it completely, it is dangerous if you don't have a back door.

I think Zimbabwe rescinded its money quite recently, it was in the 2015 or 2016 if I’m not mistaken, countries need to watch at Zimbabwe and learn a lesson, if they keep playing with the money of the people, the people are going to take away their right to print currency and once that is gone they are never going to regain that power again since bitcoin seems to be more solid than ever.

Japan and Singapore are also under discussion most of the world thinks that they will implement bitcoin system in them and it doesn’t matter which country will accept first but this is for sure that that country will enjoy a lot of facilitation of bitcoin and there will be economic stability in that region and more pf it people will prefer to work in bitcoin country ass compare to any other.

I'm not sure anyone is going to completely eliminate fiat in a good while. The situations in Zimbabwe and Venezuela are something of an organic transition, but I don't see why it would be a complete transition. What they could do is to develop a banking system where Bitcoin is sort of the gold standard. Seeing as their financial systems are so fragile now, that might give people the comfort they need to stop hyperinflation.

My guess would be japan too as they already have plans to create their own cryptocurrency for their country to use. I just read this somewhere too and I can't remember the link but that was the plan. If they already have such plan then they are ahead among any country.

I love bitcoin, but I do not think it is mature enough to base the full economy of a country, if a country wants to create a gold standard for themselves then use the gold standard, but most of the time that is not what happens, instead they get an US dollar standard or and Euro standard, which is not that much better since those currencies are going to collapse in the future as well.

It doesn't matter which one is going to be the first, but believe me it's going to be someone because whatever reserves and capital they have is extremely centralized compared to Bitcoin.

I read that as well, but that is not going to be an easy task even if japan is such an advanced country is one of the places with the bigger use of cash among developed nations so the government is going to have an uphill battle trying to convince their citizens to abandon their cash, however there is the possibility the Japanese people abandon cash in exchange of bitcoin.

According to me it is very risky because crypto is decentralized currency, none of country will eliminate fiat because if they do than how the trade can be done with other countries. It maybe possible That other  country not legalize crypto.
                                                            It would be very difficult for country to survive with crypto.

I dont think any of the country including china could make bitcoins as their local currency and stop using their fiat currency. This could really creat a lot of misunderstanding and also a lot of peoples could not make a good use of it.

Well it is hard to say but in my opinion i think it would be Japan who would eliminate fiat and convert to crypto fully as they are really supportive about bitcoins and other crypto currencies and also has legalised them.But eliminating fiat would be very hard as it has became as irreplaceable part of mostly everyone's life and it is better and convenient to use for daily needs so which ever country tries to do this they would face huge difficulties at first.

Maybe a country will never totally eliminate fiat currency because if they do that, possibly will stay out from the investments from another countries which uses USD or EUR to do it. But if I bet, I believe Philiphines are the country with the closest condition to convert to crypto because I've seen a lot of people selling cars, eletronics and even properties for BTC. They are massively adopting Bitcoin as payment and I wouldn't be surprised if their President announces Bitcoin as official payment method together with fiat money.

There is a difference between introducing cryptocurrency and digital fiat money.
We need to be aware of that. Some countries have the plan to remove cash from the picture - we might see that in Sweden for example.
The government of Sweden want to grasp total control over money/financial transactions and economy but I am sure that they would fight Bitcoin or other forms of decentralized cryptocurrency for sure.

I would say Japan. Regarding technology they have the most balls to have this done.. European countries maybe Sweden, but I really don't see that happening very soon here..

Its hard to guess of which country would be the first eliminate the fiat currency and change it to crypto fully,because as of now most of all 90% of  the country not regulated bitcoin as alternate of fiat money.but if soon many country legalize bitcoin as the alternator of money,i think japan is the first who deminished fiat and turn to crypto currency.

It is hard to say whether any major country like Japan will be the first to switch fully to using cryptocurrencies, if ever. In my view, it is the population of the countries with weak and failing fiat currencies which will be the primary driver for such conversion, let's call it the hard way. Personally, I don't see how any government would willingly choose to eliminate fiat and switch to using crypto on their own, let's call it the soft way.

I think your position might have been revised since the news went around that they almost banned bitcoins and later settled on regulating it. I don't think China will be the first to do this because their government want to be in total control but with cryptos they don't and therefore wont.

Yes there will be problems generating for them because if they somehow manage bitcoin as national currency in their own country but they will be facing numerous problems and hurdles coming along the way when they will trade with other countries. Because no other country would be making it as national currency, then conflict of implementation occurs for both countries.

Maybe Luxembourg? But those dinosaurs don't like btc to begin with.... Hmm, Dubai?

I have read an article that says China does not want bitcoin to exist in their country. So I think China will not use bitcoin as their currency. I guess fiat currency will not eliminate totally, if it will happens maybe it is too long to implement.

I think its Japan, Hong Kong or to summarize, it's going to be an Asian country first.

I changed my idea: Japan will be the first one.
And it's gonna happen soon than what you think  :)

As it turns out, China is totally banning crypto-currency! China does not want bitcoin to exist in their country, and bTC is banned in China. They are afraid of local capital flight! I think Japan was the first country to completely switch to cryptocurrency.

actually, I don't have any idea about which country that would eliminate fiat and convert into crypto because every country still use fiat to make the transaction and most people still believe with fiat and they still use fiat too. but if there is a big problem in economic in every country and people don't trust with the government and their fiat, then we can see that people will change their payment to crypto because crypto gives an easy way to make a transaction.

If it does happen it will most likely be an Asian country as they have implemented technology in almost every field. Fiat cannot be eliminated completely as it's a basic requirement and it will be difficult to conduct transactions if the network is down.

Well, honestly, I'm not very familiar with the events unfolding right now in China with respect to cryptocurrencies, apart from what I read in the headlines, but isn't NEO thought to be a sort of Chinese government cryptocurrency? If so, it very well explains all the negativity and hostility toward other cryptocurrencies in China including bitcoin itself. The authorities are basically using to the full their administrative leverage and removing all competition from the field.

If I miss something in the bigger picture, please correct me.