On Thursday, Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness revealed the news in a Facebook post. Some Facebook users congratulated Holness for “embracing a digital future,” while others expressed reservations about the Jamaican government’s objectives, accusing Holness of attempting to “bribe” individuals into the federal banking system.
The new digital currency will be known as Jamaica Digital Exchange, or Jam-Dex for short, according to a report released by the Bank of Jamaica on Feb. 17. It will have its own logo and the phrase “no cash, no problem.” The Bank of Japan anticipates launching the currency as early as next month.
For both technological and aesthetic grounds, the name “Jam-Dex” received a lot of backlash. While the Jam-Dex may be referring to the fact that currencies are “exchanged,” as well as the fact that it is both “digital” and “Jamaican,” the terminology has caused a lot of confusion.
The central bank-backed digital currency DCash, on the other hand, has been hampered by a meltdown on January 14 that knocked it offline for over two months. The ECCB didn’t announce that DCash was completely functional again until March 9, citing a “expiring certificate” on the Hyperledger Fabric that hosts the DCash ledger as the cause of the crash.
Several other countries are starting to experiment with CBDC implementation, with the Philippines announcing plans to establish Project CBDCPh as recently on March 8. Iran, Kenya, and the European Union are among the newest countries to consider implementing CBDC in some form.
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