The link for those who are interested in watching a 2 minute clip. Digital Shekel Challege
This is something COTI has been talking about for the last few years having many discussions with the Bank Of Israel and even though this is open to all I suspect COTI already has one foot in the front door. COTI being an Israeli crypto company that specializes in stable coins will be involved in some form or another.
If one looks around at the latest news regarding CBDC's it has become far quieter than it was 12 months ago. Is this the quiet before the storm because this will happen whether we like it or not. I am invested in COTI and would rather see this take many years to materialise than become part of our lives within the next 5 years. I have no doubts COTI will be the supplier of the Digital Shekel for Israel and it should make my investment very lucrative, but putting profits to one side for now I am not jumping up and down in joy. This I see as a bitter sweet moment for humanity because already I have seen card only payments in many retail stores not accepting cash.
Looking at the global map we can see that most of the countries are still in the research and development phase and are nowhere near ready to roll this out. 3 have already launched and 30 are in their pilot schemes out of a total of 134 countries giving us less than 25% with the balance still a work in progress.
We all agree that digital currencies for payment is the future, but I am also in favor of having cash on hand which I think is still very important. Most of our payments these days are done online so it makes very little difference and you never see the physical cash held in your bank account unless you draw it out.
What the Bank Of Israel is after with this Shekel challenge is ideas on the use cases besides the obvious which they list as salaries, purchasing online, retail stores through service providers and overseas payments which will have certain regulations that they will still control. Will there be other use cases besides the obvious I have no idea and it will be interesting to see what those who are involved in this come up with.
We have seen that Europe with their crypto regulation called MiCA have kept stable coins totally separate from other crypto assets calling for special regulations to control this as this is their national currencies they are playing with. Printing could not be any easier as in theory this is just touching a few keys on a computer to create whatever amount you required.
This I do not see affecting the Dollar as this is the currency of all trade for now and the Chinese who are progressing with their Digital Yuan would love to see that change. This is why they are all over BRICS and pushing for their digital currency to become the rival to the USD. This is all about having control and becoming the number one super power if they are not already there. Being in crypto definitely gives us an insiders perspective of what it taking place and wish others would pay attention to this space.