Skip to main content

Digital currencies in Trinidad and Tobago

Image
By
Let me start by defining commonly talked about terms in this space. Digital (or virtual) currency is currency available only in digital form and not physical form. Cryptocurrency is a type of digital currency where cryptography is used to create, secure and verify the currency independently of a central bank. Blockchain is a decentralised and distributed digital ledger. Bitcoin is one of the available cryptocurrency. Fintech or financial technology is the use of tech to improve and automate financial services

In January 2019, the Central Bank of TT issued a joint public advisory on virtual currency. It states that digital currency is not legal tender in Trinidad and Tobago and providers are not regulated or supervised here. In early 2018 the central bank stated their position on fintech and virtual currency and in that stated that, the bank does not consider the establishment of a Central Bank digital currency a priority at this time but will continue to study developments in this area. Also available on the Central Bank website is their November 2018 Draft E-money Policy. E-money here is fiat currency in electronic form for ease of use.

In the region however, we have some countries that have gone ahead of us. We have BITT based in Barbados that started with a digital currency in 2016. The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank has recently launched a digital currency pilot for one year. We have the Central Bank of Bahamas with their Sand Dollar digital currency project this year. The Jamaica Stock Exchange is supporting the trading of digital currencies.

For us to say that we should be moving forward with digital currency in Trinidad and Tobago, we would have to understand the advantages and disadvantages of digital currency. I think that the tech is advanced enough where we can take a chance and present it as an option but letting persons know of the risks involved. I want to applaud the work being done by the Fintech Association of Trinidad and Tobago and their promotion of a cashless future.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hobby project - Store and view exchange rates

By
The next step in my project was to test out being able store and display the rates in a database. I decided to use nodejs and supabase for this. Everything worked beautifully. Only hickup was the following error due to my package.json not being correct. SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module Added this to package.json   "type": "module" This works beautifully. Right now I am just testing fragments of what could be part of a bigger system to see what is possible and what works and how easy to code on a mobile. There is no fully functioning integrated end to end system just yet. This is also what I tested. A serverless append-only database using GitHub + Actions + Pages. That’s basically a lightweight backend system. This was the ChatGPT prompt I used. Guide me through each step. This is what I want. A manually run github actions that adds to docs/data.json with the current date and time. docs/index.html displays all the entries in data.json. Make s...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is important

By
Every now and again, I get reminded of the why. Why I have handed my life over to God. It is 3:08 p.m. and I have decided to write. Honestly, I feel like I could end this blog post right here. What more is there to say? God above all else. God is our compass on this journey called life. Everything else can become a distraction. Maybe not everything, but certainly many things. You get the point. What is important? What do we prioritise? What do we make time for? The answers look different for everyone. Our lives are different. We are tested differently. We are all products of our circumstances, and those circumstances vary from person to person. Yet God is the common thread across humanity and throughout time. God always was and always will be. One day, we will answer to God. We will give account to God. We cannot live without food, water, and oxygen, but all of those things come from God. So how can we live without God? How timely. I just received a notification from the Quranly app: S...
Post a Comment
Read more

Running php and apache on termux

By
This was my experience getting php and apache to run on termux apt update && apt upgrade -y apt install php-apache I was following an old blog post that used php 7 and got these errors Can't locate API module structure `php7_module' in file /data/data/com.termux/files/usr/libexec/apache2/libphp.so: undefined symbol: php7_module Cannot load /data/data/com.termux/files/usr/libexec/apache2/libphp7.so Corrected in apache config file vim $PREFIX/etc/apache2/httpd.conf LoadModule php_module /data/data/com.termux/files/usr/libexec/apache2/libphp.so Apache is running a threaded MPM, but your PHP Module is not compiled to be threadsafe.  You need to recompile PHP. Comment out mpm_worker and use mpm_prefork #LoadModule mpm_worker_module libexec/apache2/mod_mpm_worker.so LoadModule mpm_prefork_module libexec/apache2/mod_mpm_prefork.so This still does not work as apache (httpd) was failing silently. According to Chatty LoadModule php_module ...libphp.so often fails in Termux becau...
Post a Comment
Read more