The Blockchain Race: Turkish Digital Lira to Finish Testing in 2020

 

The Turkish administration aims to complete testing their national digital currency (CBDC) in 2020 after directions given by the countries president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the presidential program published on 3 November according to a document published yesterday by Resmi Gazete.

Turkey’s objective by launching a digital currency is to create a better infrastructure as the document notes:

“The main objective is to establish a financial sector with a strong institutional structure that can respond to the financing needs of the real bitcoin dice  sector at a low cost, offer different financial instruments to a wide investor base through reliable institutions and support Istanbul’s goal of becoming an attractive global financial center.”

Turkey is a country where cryptocurrencies are very popular and it is clearly visible on localbitcoins chart volume. In part, this interest comes because of the instability of the local currency which has gone down by more than 70% only in the last few years.

After China interest in Blockchain and discussions in the U.S. Congress about Libra, other countries are in a race to compete in the blockchain innovation.

It is strange how things change so fast. Only in a decade, governments went from laughing at the idea of bitcoin into trying to copy it for their central bank currency.

The question now is, what will happen in the next 10 years?

Feel free to post your opinion in the comments below.

LibraCoin returns as a topic in the main media. All thanks to the actions of regulatory authorities for counteracting monopolistic practices in the European Commission, which sent a special questionnaire, thanks to which they want to determine whether LibraCoin is an anti-competitive project.

The information was provided to the public by Bloomberg. According to a portal article, the Commission sent the questionnaire in August and is trying to determine whether other market players will be able to compete with Libra. In the eyes of the EU authorities, LibraCoin is a dangerous project in the field of information exchange and use of consumer data.

Regulatory authorities also want to see how the Facebook currency can work based on applications such as WhatsApp and Messenger on Facebook.

According to a spokesperson for the financial services department, the commission “monitors the market development in the field of cryptographic assets and payment services, including Libra and its development

LibraCoin will collapse before being created?

On the Facebook project, black clouds appeared actually on the first day, as soon as the giant announced its plans. The first statements – e.g. of the Governor of the Bank of England – were still conservative and suggested that Libra should be looked at first, and not deleted immediately.

Then it was worse. Congressional hearings showed how influential politicians are hostile to the project. The candidate for US President of Democrats – Maxime Waters – has even prepared a bill that would prohibit money transfers using social networking sites. Experts from the International Monetary Fund, the Bank for International Settlements and the Financial Stability Board spoke negatively about LibraCoin.

All this meant that Facebook has already suggested that it may not emit its e-currency at all. Some suggest, however, that this is deliberate action and the company is just waiting for a better moment to enter the market.