Market News
Nigeria’s Central Bank Says Its Digital Currency Pilot Will Start October 1 - COINDESK
BY Sebastian Sinclair
The Central Bank of Nigeria is set to launch the pilot of its central bank digital currency (CBDC) on Oct. 1, the Peoples Gazette reported Friday.
The bank’s information technology director, Rakiya Mohammed, announced the date during a webinar on Thursday.
Hyperledger fabric blockchain, the open-source and permissioned distributed ledger, has been tapped to run the project named GIANT.
Mohammed also said the bank may conduct a proof-of-concept before the end of 2021.
Financial officials in Nigeria have been grappling with how best to deal with the rise of cryptocurrencies in the African nation, which prohibited transactions on cryptocurrencies in the banking sector in March.
CBDCs, or state-issued digital fiat currency, are often touted as a way to counter privately issued cryptocurrencies that some argue possess the potential to destabilize a nation’s sovereignty.
