From the Middle East to the American West, blockchain is booming.
Riding piggyback on popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum is the idea of decentralized finance, commonly shortened to DeFi crypto projects. Decentralized finance use cases are commonly about reinventing a blockchain-compatible way of doing some financial activity. DeFi is a subset of cryptocurrency-fueled thought that asks more seriously: what if blockchain technology actually underpinned our economy?
It hasn’t happened yet, but there are some standouts on the world stage leading the way for this stuff. moreover, From those nurture entrepreneurial energy or those kicking off compelling pilot projects.
Here are the countries generating strong momentum for DeFi crypto technology.
The United States
The US seems to have a hand in every sphere within technology and then some, and blockchain is no exception. The country is a thriving entrepreneurial hotspot for blockchain startups and developers, and a number of US states have kickstarted their own test use cases.
Perhaps most compelling of them is the state of West Virginia, which undertook a blockchain-enabled absentee ballot process, playing a direct role in their governmental process from their mobile phones. The pilot program was made possible with help from a company called Voatz.
China
The US’s notorious economic rival stands at least equal with it on the blockchain front. Crypto is an unusually hot topic when it comes to China these days. The technology had previously been denounced by the government, but there appears to have been a change of heart lately. Chinese President Xi Jinping made DeFi crypto headlines when he recently came out in public favor of blockchain technology.
China has even teased its state-sanctioned digital currency to come, though there’s nothing real to talk about there yet. The country seems to be stockpiling lots of relevant intellectual property, however — the country has won 44 blockchain-related patents since 2016.
Iran
An American rival of a much different sense, Iran’s blockchain initiatives are largely motivated as a vehicle for escaping (or otherwise surmounting) US economic sanctions. The country’s would-be tokenized rial doesn’t actually exist yet, but the Central Bank of Iran recently updated its laws to be more favorable to cryptocurrencies — they even reversed a former ban.
Although its motivations come from a different place than other countries on this list, Iran’s blockchain scene stands to grow very rapidly.
Singapore
The Lion City hosted the two-day Block Show Asia event and was also home to DeFi project Equilibrium’s first-ever Crypto DeFiance conference immediately. Equilibrium is a framework for building decentralized finance apps, and its flagship product is a USD-pegged stablecoin called EOSDT.
These two large crypto events happened back-to-back in Singapore in November 2019, and that’s no accident. The country is not only home to a booming DeFi community, but the local government would seem to be leaning into crypto as well.
The Singaporean government announced Ubin, a digital version of the Singapore Dollar (SGD) in 2017. It was issued by the Central Bank and ran on the Ethereum blockchain. (Ubin exists because Singapore’s central bank collaborated with a blockchain consultancy called R3.)
The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia
In early 2019, the financial authorities for each of these countries teamed up to launch a digital currency project called Aber. Aber was designed to be used for settling financial transactions between the countries. The emirate of Dubai has been teasing the launch of its own state-backed cryptocurrency since 2017, but it has yet to actually materialize.
Senegal
Senegal’s eCFA, a digital version of its CFA Franc fiat currency, was successfully issued in 2016. The crypto coin was released by a local bank called Banque Régionale de Marchés (BRM), in conjunction with an Irish startup called eCurrency Mint Limited. That company just happens to help central banks set up their own digital currencies.
The DeFi vibes are strong in many other countries as well, and for many different reasons. From Venezuela to Tunisia to the Marshall Islands, DeFi is on its way to gaining truly global momentum.
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