Turkey has just announced that the country is considering a centrally controlled cryptocurrency through the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (TCMB).
The plan was revealed the 11th national development plan unveiled by the vice president of the country Fuat Oktay, state-owned media reports.
The development plan covers the Turkish national plans for development in various sectors including finance and technology through the year 2019 to 2023.
The need for Turkish CBDC
The report reveals that the Turkish government is keen on developing a blockchain distributed ledger based digital currency that would allow the country to stay at par with the dominating countries in the world such as China.
China has just announced that the country would be developing a new central bank digital currency (CBD) in the aftermath of Facebook Libra launch announcement.
Although, China clearly states that the Libra is not something the country would like to see in play given the American origins of the firm and the stablecoin.
While Turkey’s reason to include a CBDC in the plans is merely a part of the overall national plan that aims to build Istanbul as the next global financial hub.
When would the Turkish CBDC launch
The Development Plan only reveals some information on the plans that the government has in store for the financial development in the country. Given that blockchain digital ledger technology (DLT) since that is the future of the fin-tech industry.
The plan does not provide further information on the CBDC project or the details of the blockchain project that would lead to the CBDC. It is expected that concrete steps would be disclosed soon since the plan is time bound to 2023.
