Bitcoin becomes official currency in Central African Republic

bbc.co.uk

21 points·mjul··5 comments

I don't see the article explain how this works, or how it works in El Salvador. Are they establishing an official exchange rate between Bitcoin and their existing currencies? Or picking some market rate and letting it float?

If you have more than one official currency, people will pay their debts in whatever is cheaper. So I don't know how that's supposed to work.

CAR is already using a multinational currency, the CFA franc, which is used in about a dozen nations.

If they want additional currencies, then it's difficult to understand why they don't add the US dollar before Bitcoin.

If you use another states fiat, you will always be beholden to that state. If you use the native currency of the internet, Bitcoin, you are beholden to no state.

CAR has been exploited by its colonial parents for decades, they want less control over their destiny granted to others. By adopting Bitcoin, there are only a few simple things we agree on. 10 min blocks, 21M coins, valid blocks have a pow nonce that fits the difficulty equation, Blocks can only contain transactions that spend previously unspent outputs.

The article notes right up top that CAR is a Russian ally. Adding the dollar into their set of accepted currency will immediately anger their Russian allies. That's all.

The US dollar is losing relevance each year.

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