Money is as old as when humankind started to exchange the toils of their resourcefulness. It started initially through bartering of commodities, moving on to involve some commodities being used as a medium of exchange to fiat and paper money and it s now moving into the electronic world. Money, we must all know, is a medium of exchange, but it also serves as a unit of account and as a store of value. Most people are familiar with the first (medium of exchange) but mostly people of finance and economists understand the other two functions of money (unit of account and store of value).
Exchanging goods and services is the most common activity of humanity. They must sell and buy goods and services continuously to sustain their lives and this brings in the importance of what we generally refer to as money, which moved from shells to metals such as gold and silver to paper money to electronic money.
Throughout history, people involved in money and finance have worked on improving the nature of money to reduce costs, its portability and transferability and indeed, convenience but also being acceptable to people. We are familiar with banks and financial institutions which work in the world of money, the products and services provided by these institutions, regulations by governments through central banks and other financial authorities and hence all the costs involved. A country’s money is usually referred to as its currency and accordingly every country or group of countries own their own currencies.
In this article, we shall address digital currencies and developments thereof in the region. A digital currency is a new development to what is generally referred to as “electronic money”, the name given to the different ways the public, financial and non-financial institutions use electronic transfers as part of payment systems. Electronic money is not a new money or a new medium of........