OnChainFX Alert: Marshall Island's digital national currency to launch on Algorand

Earlier today, SFB Technologies announced it will issue the Marshall Islands' blockchain-based national currency, the Marshallese sovereign (SOV), on Algorand. The decision to build on Algorand reportedly came after "extensive market research among the leading protocol options." The Marshall Islands first revealed its desire to use a cryptocurrency as its legal tender back in Feb. 2018. In Sep. 2019, the country said it was proceeding with the creation of a digital national currency back, despite some pushback from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), believing it was "an opportune time to establish [its] own legal tender and lessen the nations' dependence on the dollar." The Pacific Island nation later opted to work with technology solutions provider SFB Technologies to help organize the initiative.

Algorand's native token, ALGO, is up over 20% today.

Why it matters:

• The Marshall Islands now joins the race of other central banks to issue their own digital currency. A few weeks ago, Sweden’s central bank started testing a digital currency e-krona, and China intends to its CBDC, dubbed “DCEP,” sometime this year.
• The Marshall Islands differentiated its digital currency by fixing the annual inflation rate at 4% to, in its words, “prevent runaway inflation” and by handing the maintenance and implementation of SOV over to the not-for-profit SOV Development Fund.