Uruguay’s Central Bank (BCU) formally presented rollout of its pioneering digitization of the Uruguayan peso on 3 November 2017. Set now as a pilot program, the bank’s head was careful to remind it “is not a cryptocurrency such as bitcoins,” but “a currency that remains the responsibility of the BCU,”
https://news.bitcoin.com/uruguay-first-in-the-world-to-launch-digital-currency-not-bitcoin-it-stresses/While this is not a project for decentralized currency, I think is great that a Central Bank has jumped into digital currencies.
One thing I believe it will happen is that i.e: merchants will need to adapt their POS systems to digital currency and probably allowing the co-existence of Cryptocurrencies and people getting used to it, I see this as a positive move,though. printing bills is expensive for Uruguay as it´s printed in Casa de la Moneda in Chile..
Uruguay has set the pace for many things throughout history in Southamerica (Women´s voting in the early 1900´s, universal health care, cannabis legalization, abortion legalization among other things). Very proud of my country
Quoting as proof that you really said this is great.
If you really have done your homework about BTC and other cryptocurrencies, nothing about a government issued currency is great.
If the Uruguayan government also thinks they can make a BTC replacement by having their currency in a centralized blockchain, then they too have missed the point. All it does is it kills their currency's fungibility.
It's great indeed. Have u read the article at least?
There's no intention implied to ban any crypto nor replace, the only thing is
gonna be replaced are physical bills and coins. Because Uruguay doesn't have a printing/minting facility, Afaik bills are printed in Chile and costs money to print it and transport it. I understand your point, trust me. I'm not a fan of central banks, but as has been pointed out above it could open the doors for regular folks start using crypto, it could be the blueprint for btc and alts become almost mainstream. Do your own research, Uruguay is a small country, in size and population (roughly 3 million ppl) so it could be great testing grounds for bigger economies such as Brazil, Argentina. And Chile.