By the end of the first quarter of 2022, the Caribbean nation anticipates a statewide CBDC implementation.
Back in early January, the Jamaican central bank successfully completed its first pilot test of CBDC. As soon as the trial ended, the subject of CBDC became a key one on the island nation.
The Prime Minister, Andrew Holness, expressed optimism after the results of the tests on the potential for Jamaica to become a CBDC market.
In addition, within five years, Holness anticipated that more than 70% of Jamaicans are willing to use this digital currency. In a Bloomberg interview, Holness emphasized the benefits of CBDC. Throughout the interview, he elaborates on lower banking costs and more government transparency. This comes because of the transparency that Bitcoin transactions provide. Additionally, he believes that this will increase the capacity to manage public resources.
However, Jamaica’s first launch of a national CBDC faces obstacles. In regards, Holness stated that the government must focus on a method of how to provide people with digital gadgets and the internet in general.
Accordingly, the central bank of Jamaica was a pioneer in CBDC projects. They were among the few countries to complete one of the world’s first statewide trial programs. In March 2021, the central bank began a test project with eCurrency Mint, an Irish cryptography company. They collaborated on this project for eight months.
Jamaican CBDC Distribution
Furthermore, the bank has manufactured 230 million Jamaican dollars (JMD), which are equivalent to $1.5 million worth of the CBDC. The bank has decided to approve deposit-taking institutions and payment service providers for taking care of the process. Moreover, people who work for BoJ’s banking department were given 1 million JMD ($6,500) in CBDC. Another 5 million JMD ($32,000) went to the National Commercial Bank, which is one of the country’s biggest banks.
Despite the last market correction was very unexpected for the majority of the cryptocurrency community. However, there is no doubt that governments and corporations do not really care if the market crashes or not. The potential behind blockchain technology is attracting more and more such entities to massively implement it in their systems.
In the first quarter of this year, the Bank of Japan plans to expand its CBDC network by adding two more wallet providers. Also, the central bank intends to concentrate on interoperability by testing transactions between clients of various wallet suppliers.
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