The Central Bank of the Bahamas has launched its own blockchain-supported central bank digital currency (CBDC), becoming one of the first countries on the global scale to formally issuing a CBDC.
Named “Sand Dollars,” the tokens are cryptographic symbols of the Bahamian dollar, minted and managed by the country's reserve bank, that is incorporated with the Caribbean island nation’s monetary systems.
On October 20 Project Sand Dollar posted on Facebook that the CBDC became accessible to all 393,000 inhabitants of The Bahamas from about 10:00 PM UTC. So, the Bahamas is the first country in the world to formally issuing a CBDC.
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The and Dollar website stated that the people of the Bahamas can use a Central Bank approved e-Wallet on their mobiles mentioning that activity fees are small. The central bank selected transaction provider NZIA as its technology solutions provider for the rollout of the virtual money. Unlike Bitcoin, the Sand Dollar is regulated and minted by the central bank, and can only be used for domestic proceeds. Yet, based on the project’s whitepaper, the Sand Dollar is based on distributed ledger technology—in this case, a blockchain.