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Bitcoin’s First African Adopter Starts Memecoin to Woo Investors - BLOOMBERG
(Bloomberg) -- Central African Republic has launched a memecoin in a bid to attract investment to the mineral-rich but impoverished nation.
CAR Meme is the latest attempt by President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, a former mathematics professor, to finance much needed development and strengthen the $3 billion economy. The country, long neglected by the international community, has been further isolated since it contracted mercenaries from the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group since 2018.
The landlocked country of 5 million in 2022 became the world’s second country after El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender.
That was followed by the launch of Sango Coin, a cryptocurrency through which investors could get citizenship, land and access to its natural resources. CAR’s significant reserves of mainly gold and diamonds remain largely unexploited due to decades of conflict.
The launch of the memecoin had been a success with “thousands of supporters” in CAR and abroad, Touadéra said in a post on X this week. The CAR Meme, which was created on the Solana blockchain is the official meme of the Central African Republic, backed by the country’s president, according to the official website.
Memecoins are highly volatile cryptocurrencies and generally do not have much intrinsic value.
“We’ve already begun to explore new opportunities to use memecoin to promote real change,” Touadéra said. “From education to infrastructure and financial inclusion our ambition is to harness the power of blockchain for long-term growth.”
The new CAR cryptocurrency is being launched at a time when memecoins are proliferating around the world, with US President Donald Trump and his wife Melania getting into the action. They launched their own official memecoins in January, also on the Solana blockchain. Trump’s token reached a peak valuation of more than $14 billion and Melania’s topped out at $2.1 billion before both lost most of their value.
CAR Meme was trading at $0.03 on Jupiter, a crypto trading platform on Tuesday, after having dropped nearly 90% following its launch.
--With assistance from Michael P. Regan.
