Qatar Central Bank gets ready for digital currency trial
The central bank has the infrastructure ready to circulate a national digital currency and will operate an experimental phase through October
A physical depiction of the popular digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin. (Photo: Getty Images)
The Qatar Central Bank has the infrastructure ready to circulate a national digital currency and will soon start an experimental phase that will operate through October.
The state news agency reported this week that the central bank plans to focus on distributed ledger technology, enhancing liquidity and transactions with securities.
Meanwhile, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, the UAE’s Vice President and Chairman of the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE), chaired a meeting of the bank’s Board of Directors in Abu Dhabi on Monday in which plans to introduce a digital currency and regulate cryptocurrencies were discussed.
The CBUAE has participated in Project mBridge, in which interoperability for a digital currency was successfully tested earlier this year with the central banks of China, Hong Kong and Thailand and used for remittance payments to India.
Digital currencies are coming into focus in the Gulf as governments respond to cryptocurrency market volatility and assert their monetary sovereignty, according to the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, a Qatari think tank.