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We have seen many central banks in a rush to create a CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) and the Bahamas have now successfully tested one and getting ready to launch it across all islands by next month.

The name of the first-ever CBDC to be officially launched is "Sand Dollar" and it will be pegged 1:1 to the national fiat currency (BSD  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahamian_dollar)- Bahamian Dollar) which is also pegged 1:1 to the USD. The Bahamas Central bank explained that the digital currency will not be a cryptocurrency or share similarities of stable coins but will be a digital representation of the fiat currency.

The CBDC was created by NZIA Ltd (https://nzia.io/) that is a joint venture between IBM and Zynesis (https://zynesis.com/) (a Singapore based blockchain software company. NZIA is creating CBDC digital currency payment solutions with the use of blockchain nodes and their technology as back-end dubbed "NZIA Cortex DLT" (I did not find more info about this).

Initially, there will be 48,000 sand dollars available through a mobile wallet service and the Bahamas central bank will be able to mint more by removing BSD from circulation to avoid inflation. The central bank of The Bahamas is considering the Sand Dollar as a digital currency and stated that:

Some of the key features of the Sand Dollar are :

• Offline functionality
• Near-instant validation of transactions
• Monitored transactions, Non-anonymous
• Interoperability with all payment services
• Domestic use only
• Mobile wallets - QR code scanning - 2FA
• Mandatory KYC procedure

The Bahamas is the first country to launch a CBDC and the results may set a precedent on the future launch of CBDCs in more countries that are in a testing phase of their digital fiat as China (DCEP (https://decrypt.co/33866/dcep-an-inside-look-at-chinas-digital-currency)) and Sweden (e-krona (https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/payments--cash/e-krona/)). In January the finance ministry of Bahamas released a Q&A on the new Bahamian Sand Dollar on facebook, you can read it here (https://www.facebook.com/FinanceBAH/posts/qa-on-the-new-bahamian-sand-dollar-digital-currencyq-is-the-new-sand-dollar-digi/2699453323481550/).

As a person that believes that decentralization is the vehicle for financial freedom I am not supportive of CBDCs but I report this news because of the importance of the first official launch of a CBDC anywhere in the world.

This is the link of the Sand Dollar white-paper : https://cdn.centralbankbahamas.com/download/022598600.pdf

It doesn't look much better than the current virtual fiat system. Now if they linked it to the price of sand - every dollar is exchangeable for a pound of sand, then that might be revolutionary. :)

It you consider Maduro's Petro (petromoneda), then this "Sand Dollar" is not the first. And agree with @ Jet Cash, probably this and just like the rest of other so called CBDC, this is not decentralized, and it will make easy for government to track your every purchase, and the tax, just like Russia's Rubble, it will also yields additional tax burden for it's citizens.

Lol! From where did you get that information?

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But yes, it will not be anything drastically different than the current fiat system. Just CBDCs will be more trackable by the government!

I'm not exactly sure but I think that the CBDC is a replacement of the fiat currency in a form of digital currency and as they are doing in Bahamas they remove fiat when they mint the digital coins. In Venezuela the Petro was purposedly backed by oil reserves and other assets as the Bolivar is completely useless, but they didn't use in a way to replace the fiat but as a way to bypass the sanctions and embargo imposed.


The value of dollar is raplidly reaching the price of one grain of sand!

After ICO, IEO, Defi, Uniswap. I guess, this is going to be the next thing that the crypto market will ever had, the CBDCs. The idea isn't new and I've seen news regarding it with China and Europe.

These government backed up currencies as they call aren't really different from the digital cash that we have for each of our countries. The name's just a bit different to make it sound like something new.

Sand Dollar" and it will be pegged 1:1 to the national fiat currency (BSD - Bahamian Dollar) which is also pegged 1:1 to the USD. The Bahamas Central bank explained that the digital currency will not be a cryptocurrency or share similarities of stable coins but will be a digital representation of the fiat currency.
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Let's do some maths here and try and prove the hypothesis that these guys are so proudly putting forth.

According to them:
1 Sand dollar = 1 USD
But also:
1 BSD = 1 USD
Now if x=y and x=z , so z=y and so :
1 Sand Dollar = 1 BSD

Now the government clearly states that it's not a cryptocurrency and all the features they mentioned are nothing but digitalized system of government controlled fiat that we already have plenty of.

It's Fiat ! Nothing else. They are wasting their resources making something unnecessary. At the same time it is Righty said that it's not one of a kind or some first Invention!! We have many such proposals and existing currencies in the market.

Bahamas are using crypto to its fullest, I have seen them do this type of thing over and over again and they are really progressive when it comes to cryptos. Did you know that Bahamas are the first place that accepted ethereum companies to actually manage to build a nationwide ID deal? From now on all of your ID will be on ethereum blockchain if you are a citizen and it will never be lost and never will have a problem, if you ever need an update (like married or something) you can still do it online as well.

It is a marvelous feature and Bahamas was the first place it was done. Obviously being smaller helps them, doing it in China for example would be a big task, but at least they are looking at it and doing something with it and that worths a lot if you ask me.

Very interesting. If I'm not mistaken, this was not planned for the Chinese or European CBDCs. The ability to transact offline is much more cash-like than I would have expected.

Oh but I guess it's not really in bearer form:


Less cool than I thought.

The "Sand Dollar" is a pretty awesome name though. :D

Wow, that's really great to hear. First time to hear such development. I believe more and more countries will follow this kind of progress. And yes, small countries can easily implement this but once they successfully implemented to its own people, expanding to neighbouring countries will be easy. Because they already know the bugs or potential issues.