Ukraine Government Picks Stellar To Help Build National Digital Currency (coindesk.com) 34
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CoinDesk: Ukraine's government has chosen the Stellar blockchain network as a platform to build a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Announced Monday, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to build out a "virtual assets ecosystem and national digital currency of Ukraine." The National Bank of Ukraine has been researching the possibility of CBDC implementation since 2017, and the Stellar partnership will now be the basis of its virtual currency development, according to Digital Transformation and IT Deputy Minister Oleksandr Bornyakov.
"The Ministry of Digital Transformation is working on creating the legal environment for the development of virtual assets in Ukraine," Bornyakov said in a statement. "We believe our cooperation with the Stellar Development Foundation will contribute to development of the virtual asset industry and its integration into the global financial ecosystem." Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon said the partnership with Ukraine's government and other stakeholders to digitize the hryvnia will officially launch this month. "We've been in conversations with governments and institutions all over the world about the key considerations for issuing CBDCs. It's important to remember many, if not all, of these organizations weren't designed to be technology companies and that they have many audiences that they are supporting," Dixon said via an email. "That makes a public-private partnership so essential to getting this right."
"The Ministry of Digital Transformation is working on creating the legal environment for the development of virtual assets in Ukraine," Bornyakov said in a statement. "We believe our cooperation with the Stellar Development Foundation will contribute to development of the virtual asset industry and its integration into the global financial ecosystem." Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon said the partnership with Ukraine's government and other stakeholders to digitize the hryvnia will officially launch this month. "We've been in conversations with governments and institutions all over the world about the key considerations for issuing CBDCs. It's important to remember many, if not all, of these organizations weren't designed to be technology companies and that they have many audiences that they are supporting," Dixon said via an email. "That makes a public-private partnership so essential to getting this right."
The Ministry of Digital Transformation? (Score:5, Funny)
Morons (Score:2)
Critical services have no business using hype-driven highly experimental technology.
Re: Morons (Score:3, Interesting)
That is the thing though... 1. Come on, a blockchain is neither complicated nor highly experimental, .... and 2. having a state behind it solves its two key problems: Stability and local invonsistencies. A state can always declare which one is the correct chain, and keeping it stable will really be no different from any regular fiat currency. Of course at the cost of losing its very advantage(s): Decentrality (and imaginary anonymity).
The rest is classic IT (and physical) security. If you cannot get that ri
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The blockchain is not. And in principle this could work. But all available implementations are highly experimental and so far I have not seen one that was not deeply flawed. I admit I stopped looking after a while. I see enough systems designed by incompetents at work.
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"SMS digital money"? Never heard of it, but sounds interesting. Got a good reference?
That said, there is no need to encrypt a blockchain. Just to sign the increments. For example git (the version control system) does that. Has a different security profile though in that is basically ensures traceability as to who changed what.
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having a state behind it solves its two key problems: Stability and local invonsistencies.
Ukariane isn't exactly famous about its stability either.
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Haven't you posted this sob story before?
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They might all be the same person.
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eBay also screwed their own users over. I had a four character username there from I think 1997, and eBay disabled it. Really sucked losing over twenty years of good feedback. Why do their screw over their best and oldest customers?
How about kicking out the ruskies first ? (Score:2)
Instead of wasting their money on some crypto-bullshit, they should spend it on their military to kick the russian invaders out of east ukraine first.
If noone reminds the ex-kgb director criminal psychopath that the era of the soviet union is over, there will be no more Ukraine within the next decade anyway, just the new Soviet Union.
Oh, and kick them out of Crimea too.
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they should spend it on their military to kick the russian invaders out of east ukraine first.
That would be like a cockapoo attacking a grizzly. Militarily, Ukraine is no match for Russia.
Russia has four times as many people and an economy 12 times larger. They have a far more professional army that is much better equipped.
Ukraine is poor, weak, corrupt, and divided. The Donbas people speak Russian and are doing better economically under Russian rule than they did under Ukrainian rule. Ukrainians need to clean up their government and fix their country before reunification is a possibility.
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Before or after the Amerikanskis? (Score:5)
Because, newsflash: The Ukraine hasn't had a leader that wasn't a US spy or Russian spy ever since their independence from Russia.
E.g. the "orange revolution" was *literally* just "that US puppet" and literal CIA extras playing "protest" versus "that Russian puppet" and literal FSB extras playing "protest". The Ukrainians had no say and no chance. (Just like with Americans and the US "two" party system.)
But Americans only ever hear of the Russian shenanigans. Not of the US ones.
(No idea about what Russians hear. I don't think it will be any less distorted. But apart from swearing, I don't speak Russian.)
Besides, what the hell did you expect, when you openly break the Warsaw pact (which would in international law legally allow Russia to declare war!) by having the EU expand east, and then put missile launchers right up to the Russoan border?
When Russia did that, remember how you called it "Cuban missile crisis"? Yeah, you can understand the reaction now? Not agree, of course, but understand.
And no, Putin's team is definitely a bunch of assholes. Don't you fuckin dare putting me in the "Russian" corner, just because I'm not in yours. For me, you're just no fuckin better and you BOTH should leave foreign countries alone, that's all.
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That reminds me of my girlfriend in the UK. She's Iranian and left Iran in a hurry at the time of the revolution. Her father was very well connected in the prior regime and so she would attend many parties with the CIA people.
Then as the shit was going down, she saw those same CIA agents in islamic garb initiating the street riots and general mayhem that led to the revolution.
I guess the plan worked until it didn't.
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Let's be honest.... (Score:4, Insightful)
... the purpose here is toralitarian tracking of literally every transaction possible.
Wait for them "phasing out" cash, the only truly anonymous un-remote-hackable universal local peer-to-peer currency.
Though I wonder... Ukrainian cops likely get a quite low salary, and like in similar countries, likely rely on bribes. I doubt that will happen via some blockhain-and-ball, and I highly doubt they will "just" feed their families less. (And no, bullying to gt a bribe is not cool, but hey.)
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... the purpose here is toralitarian tracking of literally every transaction possible.
Black market will switch to USD in a heartbeat. There goes your totalitarian control. ... Until USD and everybody else goes digital, which seems to be in the cards. I'm really wondering what's next for black market? Bitcoin? Silver?
Blockchain suitability (Score:1)
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It's fair to speculate the Ukraine is doing it out of fear of Russia. If Russia were to invade and block access to banks and government buildings with tanks then the use of a crypto currency would give them partial safety. However, it can only be a temporary solution against such a scenario.
The downsides of crypto currency for the population are ugly in war times. With Russia being already a cyber attack "super power" is it only riskier. I don't know anything about the Stellar blockchain, but in the case of
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Why not just LETS (Local Exchange Trading System)? (Score:2)
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
LETS systems have helped countries in times of currency problems before.
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All the Ukranian government did was select the Stellar blockchain as the basis for their own currency. They'll likely build their own national blockchain and use it to interface with Stellar for transmission of value to other blockchains (which is one of the stated function of Stellar's underlying public blockchain: https://support.blockchain.com... [blockchain.com]). They just as easily could have used the Ethereum blockchain and issued an ERC20 token like TUSD/TRU, or they could have used a domestic centralized blockcha
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Eventually, all tokenized assets need to be transmitted to or from other tokenized asset systems through some common interface, in much the same way that countries and banks have agreements about how currency will be handled when physically transmitted to foreign countries (and back again). It's a necessity for international trade. Creating a proprietary digital currency system all but ensures difficulty in interfacing with other digital currency systems of other countries. So you have a choice: you cont
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