Ecuador will be the first

Buenos Aires Herald
August 30, 2014

Ecuador 

is heralding its plans to create the world’s first government-issued digital currency, which some analysts believe could ultimately replace the country’s existing currency, the US dollar, which the government cannot control.

 

The electronic money, which Central Bank officials say they expect will start circulating in December, does not have a name and officials would not disclose technical details, though they said it would not be a crypto-currency like Bitcoin. The amount of the new currency created would depend on demand.

Deputy director Gustavo Solorzano said it is to exist in tandem with the greenback and, by law, be backed by ‘’liquid assets.” It would be geared toward the 2.8 million Ecuadoreans — 40 percent of participants in the economy _ too poor to afford traditional banking, officials say.

Initially, it will be able to make and receive payments on cellphones, Solorzano said. Such mobile payments schemes are especially popular in African nations including Kenya

 

and Tanzania,

where they are privately run.

The new currency was approved, and stateless crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin simultaneously banned, by Ecuador’s National Assembly last month.

Leftist President Rafael Correa

has said the project’s only problem is that it has taken this long, defending it against “pseudo-analysts who have appeared in the media trying to smear (it).” He denies any plan to replace the US dollar, which Ecuador set as its currency in 2000 after a crippling banking crisis.

The state is currently US$11 billion in debt, mostly to China, which buys most of Ecuador’s oil. It recently sold US$2 billion in bonds with a 7.95 percent return, as well as obtaining another US$400 million from Goldman Sachs in exchange for part of its gold reserves.

March 4, 2014

Chevron doesn't have to pay Ecuadorean judgment because lawyers obtained it by corrupt means, a New York federal judge rules. Chevron had been sued for environmental damage to the rainforest from oil operations. 

"Justice is not served by inflicting injustice. The ends do not justify the means," U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan wrote.

:)

2010

The SUCRE was first used as a virtual currency in 2010 in two transactions between Ecuador and Venezuela.

The SUCRE (Spanish: Sistema Único de Compensación Regional, English: Unified System for Regional Compensation) is a regional currency proposed for commercial exchanges between members of the regional trade bloc Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), which was created as an alternative to the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA). The SUCRE is intended to replace the US dollar as a medium of exchange in order to decrease US control of Latin American economies and to increase stability of regional markets.