Zimbabwe Will Launch a Gold-backed Digital Currency

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has announced plans to introduce a gold-backed digital currency as legal tender.

The token will serve as an alternative form of electronic money and holders of the Zimbabwean dollar (ZWL) will be able to exchange it for a gold-backed token, offering a store of value and protection against the local currency’s volatility.

Chairman John Mangoudia has stated that ZWL’s instability is causing local residents to convert it into foreign assets.

Only a year ago, one local dollar was worth $150, but its current value is 1,000 times less than the US dollar, as reported by Investing.com.

This isn’t the first time a gold-backed token has been proposed, as the Swiss crypto bank SEBA issued one in December 2021, followed by Japanese trading firm Mitsui’s gold-pegged stablecoin and a proposal from US senators for a Texas digital currency backed by the precious metal.