Georgia

Crypto’s rising popularity in Georgia

• Bitcoin.com: Fintechs Invited to Work on Georgia’s Central Bank Digital Currency – May 2021
  NBG is now inviting companies from innovative industries as well as interested financial institutions to join a public-private partnership tasked to facilitate the adoption of a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The bank is considering launching the digital version of the national fiat, Georgian lari (GEL), as a publicly available coin that will have legal tender status.
  
  
• ICIS: Georgia must scrap electricity subsidies to curb Abkhaz bitcoin mining – April 2021
  LONDON (ICIS)–Georgian authorities should immediately scrap electricity subsidies to curb illegal cryptocurrency mining in Abkhazia which threatens to deepen economic imbalances and the country’s dependence on Russian imports, a senior researcher at a Tbilisi-based think tank told ICIS. Givi Adeishvili, head of economic and social policy direction at the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) said per-capita electricity consumption in the north-western Abkhaz region is now 3.3 times higher than in the rest of the country. While overall Georgian electricity consumption was down 10% year on year in 2020, it increased by 24% to 2.5TWh over the same period in the Black Sea province.
  
  
• Cointelegraph: Students in Georgia set to be taught about crypto at high school – March 2021
  The Georgia House of Representatives has passed a bill that calls for state education officials to implement a study program based around financial literacy for high schoolers — and cryptocurrency is on the curriculum list. The bill passed the lower chamber of Georgia on March 8 by a vote of 169-2. The bill was sponsored by six Republican candidates and has been sent to the Senate for further deliberation. The program outlines 16 areas of financial literacy to be studied by students in the tenth or eleventh grade.