Ecuador Presidential Candidate Proposes A National Cryptocurrency

The Ecuador Presidential Candidate has just proposed a national cryptocurrency and a goal to merge blockchain technology with gold in order to keep the gold standard alive and well. Geovanni Andrade proposed to mint gold-backed crypto which we read more about in our latest crypto news.

Ecuador is not really a crypto-friendly country as the closest it ever got to have a positive stance against crypto was when it moved from a ban on their use to accepting them as assets but not as a means of exchange. The Ecuador Presidential candidate now wants to change that. Geovanni Andrade who is a candidate for the 2021 general election and president of the Ecuadorian-Chilean Chamber of Mining and Presidential candidate disclosed his intentions to create national crypto and to facilitate transactions in the country.

In an interview with the Primicias digital newspaper, the businessman talked about the plan and mentioned that a national cryptocurrency will make internal transactions much easier and will facilitate their audit. He said that this is of essential nature as he has a really big vision for the country:

“We are looking at ways to create an Ecuadorian cryptocurrency, this does not mean that we are going to escape from dollarization—we must support dollarization. It is very important that we create the cryptocurrency for all the internal benefits within the country, such as internal transactions. This would work very well for Ecuador.”

Talking about this issue is critical in every political speech in Ecuador since the country is extremely divided on this issue. Back in 2000 when president Jamil Mahuad dollarized the economy in trying to curb inflation, the move cost him his office but no one was ever able to undo his decision. Andrade’s currency will be backed by guarantees of gold and wants to create a vast gold refinery that will purchase the raw metal from other countries and also store it and process it in the country as a part of the wealth reserves.

This way, the new cryptocurrency will be linked to gold but will be recognized as a legal tender. It will not be a substitute for the dollar but a sort of alternative currency similar to the Venezuelan Petro. This does sound interesting but it also seems hard to achieve. He is still fighting for the president spot but he already lost the support of his own party. This is the first time that Ecuador has had a politician open the idea of decentralization of the finance sector and the use of distributed ledger technologies even though he never mentioned anything about BTC or mentioned cryptocurrencies in his official government plan which is copied from a Wikipedia site.