Sweden Gains Progress In Crypto Arms Race With Own CBDC

Sweden has officially taken its place as one of the few countries that have started the piloting phase of its Central Bank Digital Currency, or CBDC. This marks one of the few significant economies currently partaking in it, with China has been in the lead for quite some time now. Now, however, China has gained a competitor, with the e-krona testing already underway.

Riksbank Taking Sweden To Crypto Integration

The Riksbank, Sweden’s central banking firm, stands as one of the world’s oldest central banks. As it stands now, the Riksbank has launched a one-year pilot program of the country’s CBDC. This program aims to test its relative viability within the country, and how easy it would be to adopt a centrally-issued blockchain-based national currency. Should it prove successful, a full replacement will commence shortly after that.

Sweden stands as the first major western nation to launch its trial CBDC program, being the third country to start it globally behind China and the Bahamas. Technically, it’s the fourth if one counts the Petro, but the Petro is suspected to be more of a scam than anything else, built to try and stabilize a suffering economy.

The Way The Cookie Crumbles

However, Sweden has a chance. As grim as it is to point out, with China’s massive efforts to put the new coronavirus epidemic under control, the country’s crypto development might very well lag behind. As a result, Sweden could overtake it, should it act fast and efficiently.

Should this trial of the e-Krona prove successful, it will summarily be released to the public. The country intends to replace all of its banking activity with this CBDC as soon as possible.

Possible Crypto Integration

The Riksbank released a statement along with this announcement. It explained that the entire purpose of the project itself is to show how the general public could leverage the e-Krona. According to the Riksbank, Sweden is almost cashless as is, recording a measly 1% of transactions in its entire country that are done with banknotes. As such, switching over to a CBDC will be far easier than other countries.

As it stands now, the trial run is expected to go to February of 2021. Should this be successful, it will mark one of the first countries to experience full crypto integration. Make no mistake, crypto is the future, but it probably won’t be the crypto the great Satoshi Nakamoto had envisioned. Whether that is good or bad, is purely subjective, but crypto’s progress is irrefutable.