Rwanda to develop a transactional cryptocurrency – Yaliwe Soko
Could this be a game-changer for Africa?
The popularity of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin has been on the rise on the African continent and Rwanda has not been an exception.
This has mainly been a result of getting rich quick schemes that have saturated and the market and often left a bitter taste in most investor’s mouths. This has resulted in most African governments not being in favour of currencies. According to a report by Business report published in January 2019 a lot of South Africans had fallen victim to bitcoin scams and some of the people went as far as pawning their vehicles. Another report by Quartz Africa quoted the Nigerian senate asking the Central Bank and other regulators to educate citizens about the dangers of cryptocurrency due to past events like the MMM Ponzi scheme that saw Nigerians lose a lot of money. However, it has not been all negative news as we have seen countries like Zimbabwe turn to bitcoin as a store of value due to the country’s struggling economy.
Rwandacoin and what it means for Africa
In recent years Rwanda has seen a lot of growth despite recovering from Genocide. Rwanda has been at the frontier of technological innovation and Rwanda developing a cryptocurrency does not come as a surprise.
Rwandacoin has the potential to become:-
· A widely accepted African transactional currency I favour of the recently developed African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) Agreement.
· A catalyst for African governments to harness blockchain technology and it’s benefits not limited to cryptocurrencies
· A call for the implementation of favourable regulation in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space in Africa.
The question now is how will the coin be developed and implemented? What measures are being put in place to minimize volatility and enhance scalability? Well maybe the Rwandan government has all this thought out already or maybe they could use the recently concluded project Khokha a proof of concept design launched by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), to simulate a ”real world” trial of distributed ledger technology (DLT) based wholesale payment system.
In conclusion, I would like to say that initiatives like these by state governments show that Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are going nowhere.
References and additional reading
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330511461_Rwandacoin_Prospects_and_challenges_of_developing_a_cryptocurrency_for_transactions_in_Rwanda
https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/technology/bitcoin-sending-some-south-africans-into-financial-ruin-12788111
https://qz.com/africa/1194006/bitcoin-in-nigeria-senate-warns-against-cryptocurrencies/
https://www.businessinsider.co.za/sarb-project-khokha-results-a-success-but-distributed-ledgers-not-for-interbank-yet-2018-6
Published at Mon, 26 Aug 2019 01:26:49 +0000
Bitcoin Pic Of The Moment
✅ This image from Marco Verch (trendingtopics) is available under Creative Commons 2.0. Please link to the original photo and the license. 📝 License for use outside of the Creative Commons is available by request.
By trendingtopics on 2019-04-09 10:06:04
