Yeah some countries are planning. I think India may launch its own. There were rumors about LaxmiCoin a few years back. Instead of legalizing bitcoin they may launch their own.
This is what all countries are going to do. They are not to ban Bitcoin or anything like that but bitcoin is not going to displace national currencies, this is not going to happen. Goverments will take advantage of this technology to create a "digital version" of national currencies and I think this will be good for bitcoin adoption. People will get use to digital currencies and when they know about bitcoin and realise that it can help them to keep their privacy in their transactions they will give it a try
People repeat the same nonsense year after year
All countries already have "digital versions" of their national currencies. In this way, they don't need to create anything since electronic money transfers (since this is what digital currency ultimately boils down to) existed decades before Internet itself was born. And what's more, the amount of digital fiat in most (if not all) countries by far exceeds the amount of cash in circulation. You seem to be posting from a very backward place or just severely uninformed (no offense intended)
My fault. When I said "digital versions" I should have specified that I was talking about "blockchain digital versions", I mean, they will create some kind of coin/token backed by fiat money a 1.1 ratio.
But what's the purpose of that?
If it will be a decentralized coin (something likely dubbed as "people's money"), they will be just starting another altcoin, which makes no sense since there are already quite a few altcoins sticking around (and even more kicked the bucket by now). If it will be centralized, then the whole idea makes no sense since they already have fiat which is by definition as centralized as fuck. There is simply no use for blockchain technology as far as fiat currencies are concerned
Those coins will be centralized, that´s for sure, and controlled. I guess the banks will play a key role.
They are researching on blockchain technology time ago. About the purpose my guess is that goverments are seeing the potential o cryptocoins and want to "offer" population "their" coin so they will be able to control the movement of money, I am sure that there will be no privacy or anonymity with these coins
And what did come out of that?
I've heard such talks for years already but I haven't yet seen such a "coin" for real. And if it is centralized, who and how will be mining it if we talk about the blockchain technology? And why would they waste resources (electricity, labor, equipment) if they can just draw figures in the spreadsheet on their servers? Apart from that, how do you picture people "transacting" with this coin if it is issued by government and it won't be fiat? In other words, how will it be different from fiat, in practice?
There could be two reasons why a government would want to launch their own cryptocurrency:
1. To limit the usage of bitcoins by their citizens.
2. Solely because they want to upgrade their financial system through blockchain technology. They know it has future and are well aware that this technology could be implemented in many fields, what better place than to launch a cryptocurrency.
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/singapores-central-bank-tokenizes-dollar-via-ethereum-blockchain/Singapore tested digital dollar via private electrum blockchain.
A working interbank transfer prototype on a private Ethereum blockchain network based on proof-of-concept (PoC)
We look forward to the next phases of our project which will develop trial applications for securities settlement and cross-border payments
Credit/debit, ATM, and other online payment options could be termed as electronic payment systems but from electronic to fully digitalize fiat, government needs cryptography/blockchain technology. Would it be similar to fiat? Yeah, centralized and it would share some major properties with fiat? Would it be similar to cryptocurrencies? Yeah, if blockchain technology is involved then there should be some similarities.
Most of the countries are going cashless now. Paypal is centralized, but still it has a huge user base solely because majority of people prefer convenience over being anonymous. A government backed cryptocurrency would get a lot of media attention + if it does have cryptocurrency properties then ease of access and quicker transactions would make it more preferable than credit/debit card + if it is available for day-to-day use it would get popular.
This is just simple logic, bitcoin is decentralized and the other centralized like fiat. People who want to use a decentralized pseudonymous currency would always stick to bitcoin and those who are using fiat might see a government backed cryptocurrency as something superior than credit/debit cards or other means of online payment system.
So in short, government would just be upgrading its financial system through the launch of its own cryptocurrency and it has no direct correlation with bitcoin, but indirectly it might slow down bitcoins growth to a small extent.