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 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?