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Central African Republic president launches crypto initiative following Bitcoin adoption

Faustin-Archange Touadéra, pres­i­dent of the Cen­tral African Repub­lic, has announced the gov­ern­ment will be back­ing an ini­tia­tive cen­tered around devel­op­ing the country’s blockchain infrastructure.In a Mon­day announce­ment on Twit­ter, Touadéra said the CAR gov­ern­ment would be launch­ing San­go, a cryp­to ini­tia­tive pro­posed fol­low­ing the country’s adop­tion of Bit­coin (BTC) as legal ten­der in April. Accord­ing to Sango’s web­site, the gov­ern­ment intends to launch the pro­gram dur­ing a July 3 event in which the pres­i­dent, mem­bers of his cab­i­net and indus­try experts will dis­cuss the phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture need­ed for the CAR to enter the cryp­to space, as well as the legal frame­work for the coun­try. The San­go project’s plans include build­ing a “legal cryp­to hub” aimed at attract­ing busi­ness­es and glob­al cryp­to-enthu­si­asts, expand­ing the adop­tion of Bit­coin in the coun­try, and cre­at­ing a vir­tu­al “cryp­to island” — a spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone in the meta­verse that will seem­ing­ly have an equiv­a­lent space in the phys­i­cal world. Accord­ing to San­do, the CAR plans to have a ded­i­cat­ed legal frame­work for cryp­to in place by the end of 2022.“The ambi­tious strat­e­gy to quick­ly build a suc­cess­ful econ­o­my can only rely on new tech­nolo­gies that have tak­en the world by storm and tak­en mon­ey to anoth­er lev­el, with Bit­coin as a watch­word,” said Touadéra. With #Bit­coin as #legal­tender & inspi­ra­tion, our coun­try opens a new chap­ter in its inspir­ing jour­ney towards a brighter future via #blockchain #tech. Every­one is wel­come to wit­ness the San­go Gen­e­sis Event that will be broad­cast on the 3rd of July, on https://t.co/LIQiKGhcBS. pic.twitter.com/7u6knv5f6w— Faustin-Archange Touadéra (@FA_Touadera) June 27, 2022Related: Cryp­to users in Africa grew by 2,500% in 2021: ReportTouadéra’s and the CAR’s plans to adopt cryp­to seem to be emu­lat­ing those of El Sal­vador, whose Bit­coin Law declar­ing the dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy legal ten­der went into effect in Sep­tem­ber 2021. The Latin Amer­i­can nation also announced plans to cre­ate its town Bit­coin City fund­ed by $1 bil­lion worth of BTC bonds, placed on hold as of June amid the bear market.

Get Ready for the Post-Roe Sex Police!

The basic argu­ment against abor­tion was suc­cinct­ly expressed just six weeks ago by Flori­da Sen. Rick Scott in the pages of The Wall Street Jour­nal when he bold­ly pro­nounced that “the Repub­li­can posi­tion on abor­tion is based on a fun­da­men­tal belief that life begins at con­cep­tion.” Leav­ing aside exact­ly what con­cep­tion means—is it the same as…

Commonwealth Meeting in Rwanda Has a Long Agenda. Human Rights Isn’t on It.

A sum­mit of the orga­ni­za­tion that was born out of the embers of the British Empire is being held for the first time in the African coun­try, but dis­cus­sion of the host’s alleged abus­es is con­spic­u­ous­ly miss­ing. KIGALI, Rwan­da — Pres­i­dents, princes and prime min­is­ters from across the world gath­ered on Fri­day in Kigali, the…

The 2022 Kenyan elections

With their upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tions lat­er this sum­mer, Kenyans con­tin­ue their col­lec­tive effort at strength­en­ing and deep­en­ing their democ­ra­cy. But the moment is also fraught. The August 9 vote is expect­ed to be the most tight­ly con­test­ed in Kenya’s recent his­to­ry, with polit­i­cal ten­sions ris­ing since Kenyan Pres­i­dent Uhu­ru Keny­at­ta shift­ed his sup­port from Deputy…

Window of opportunity closing for South Sudan, on road to lasting peace

With eight months remain­ing, the win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty is clos­ing for South Sudan to meet crit­i­cal bench­marks required to com­plete its tran­si­tion away from long-run­n­ing civ­il con­flict, the Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the coun­try told the Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil on Mon­day, press­ing par­ties to the Novem­ber 2018 peace deal, to imple­ment their com­mit­ments in let­ter and spirit.

Philadelphia celebrates Juneteenth with block party, parade, film festival, and more — WHYY

It was a fes­tive Sun­day in Philadel­phia, as folks cel­e­brat­ed June­teenth in sev­er­al parts of the city.  In Cen­ter City, the African Amer­i­can Muse­um in Philadel­phia, or AAMP, host­ed a June­teenth block par­ty where hun­dreds of peo­ple jammed to hip hop and dance clas­sics like “The Wob­ble” and Jay‑Z’s “I Just Wan­na Love You.”  The block party…

Juneteenth Is a Federal Holiday, but in Most States It’s Still Not a Day Off

Last June, Pres­i­dent Biden made June­teenth a fed­er­al hol­i­day, pro­claim­ing it as a day for all Amer­i­cans to com­mem­o­rate the end of slav­ery. One year lat­er, only 18 states have passed leg­is­la­tion that would pro­vide fund­ing to let state employ­ees observe the day as a paid state hol­i­day, accord­ing to the Con­gres­sion­al Research Ser­vice. Oppo­nents of…