El Salvador to Launch Government Blockchain Infrastructure on Algorand This Year
The country has signed an agreement with Latin American asset tokenization company Koibanx to allow official records to be hosted on the blockchain.
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SAN SALVADOR, EL SALVADOR - AUGUST 27: A veteran waves a flag of El Salvador during a protest against the bitcoin law by veterans of the Salvadoran civil war on August 27, 2021 in San Salvador, El Salvador. The new bitcoin law should come into force on September 7. (Photo by Roque Alvarenga/APHOTOGRAFIA/Getty Images)
El Salvador’s government has signed an agreement with Koibanx, a Latin American asset tokenization and blockchain financial infrastructure company, to develop the country’s blockchain infrastructure on top of the Algorand blockchain.
The ability to store official documents digitally on top of the Algorand blockchain will come before the end of this year, Koibanx CEO and co-founder Leo Elduayen told CoinDesk.
“We want to make business transactions and any other commercial act secure, transparent, agile and automatic,” Elduayen said.
Koibanx first approached El Salvador’s government after it passed a law in June that made bitcoin legal tender in the country, Elduayen said.
“We assumed that a government that is willing to take this type of measure might be also open to use or leverage blockchain technology for other aspects – not only for what the law defines itself, but for other government areas,” he noted.
Koibanx has already started working with El Salvador’s National Registration Center (CNR) on the project, Elduayen said.
According to Elduayen, each person or legal entity will have its own address containing tokens or hashes with documentation. In addition, all transactions between private companies or individuals with different government entities will be recorded in the Algorand protocol.
Elduayen clarified that money won’t be exchanged on the platform, but securities or rights, such as property titles or bank guarantees, will be.
In July, local media published a report that El Salvador’s government was planning to launch a native cryptocurrency that consumers would be able to use to pay for services.
Elduayen noted that Algorand’s blockchain could support a national stablecoin for El Salvador, but said that it is not in the plans at the moment.
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