The country with the world’s highest inflation focuses on digital currency

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Zimbabwe, one of the world’s poorest and highest inflation nations, wants to copy the model of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), such as those of Nigeria or China.

Although this is not a final decision, the African country’s is preparing to develop and launch a CBDC., commented Innocent Matshe, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, to Bloomberg.

That is why they turned to Nigeria, an African country that has launched a digital currency, although it has not been very successful in usingPeople prefer other assets such as bitcoin. In this sense, Matshe expressed that. Is a learning point for them. “Then we can take steps to try to mitigate the factors that are causing this hesitation in the Nigerian market,” he said.

The exchange between the two nations began last June, when they began to a joint knowledge exchange program on the design, consideration and use of CBDCs, as outlined to him by the Central Bank of Nigeria in a report.

In addition to Nigeria, the Zimbabwean government has also approached China to keep an eye on the digital yuan. Although Matshe assured that the currency they are preparing will have its own particular specifications.

“We do not expect it to be directly linked to any currency, we are keeping all our options open,” the Zimbabwean regulator added.

This move was announced just as Zimbabwe has the highest inflation in the world. Inflation reached 200% last June and is expected to reach 284% this month, from according to to Statist.

The escalation of the crisis is such that recently the Central Bank of Zimbabwe began to minting gold coins to be used as a means of payment. Each gold coin is equivalent to the price of one ounce of gold on the international market, plus 5 percent for production costs.

Bitcoin as a safe haven for Zimbabweans.

In this crisis context, bitcoin have become one of the main financial tools available to the public to counter the soaring growth of inflation.

Zimbabwean citizens’ interest in bitcoin has reached such a level that, during the political crisis that was triggered by dictator Mugabe’s exit from power, digital currency exchanges operating in Africa more than doubled the value of bitcoin of the world’s exchanges, as reported by CryptoNews..

Last year it was said in the local media that the government was paying attention to the growing demand for cryptocurrencies among its citizens, seeing cryptocurrencies as a possible avenue for growth. This, despite the fact that the Central Bank of Zimbabwe bans Using, trading, holding and/or otherwise dealing in cryptocurrencies.