Half a year after Myanmar’s Military Junta revealed its plans to launch a digital currency, the country’s government, ousted in a 2021 coup, is stating its own intention to launch one using frozen national funds.
In an interview with Bloomberg on September 6, The Minister of Planning of the Government of National Unity of Myanmar in exile, Tin Tun Naing, asked for the “blessing of the United States” to use “virtually” the country’s reserves, frozen by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since February of 2021.
The funds Naing mentions have been frozen in accounts in Singapore, Thailand and Japan and could run into the billions of dollars, according to Bloomberg. Although Naing doubts that the United States can decide to allocate these assets directly to the Government of National Unity, he points to the possibility of using them as reserves to support the digital currency of the alternative central bank in exile.. The money is needed to support “revolutionary efforts” in the country.
The Government of National Unity is made up mostly of legislators who won democratic elections in November 2020 only to be ousted by the country’s long-running military junta in February 2021. Its previous efforts to gain financial support include issuing bonds. revolutionaries and the auction of the mansions owned by the leader of the junta Min Aung Hlaing.
In February 2022, a board representative claimed that the military was planning to issue a digital currency to support payments within Myanmar and “help improve financial activities” in the country. Before the military took power, the Central Bank of Myanmar had warned that anyone in Myanmar caught trading digital assets could be jailed or fined.
However, in December 2021, the Government of National Unity announced that it would recognize Tether (USDT) as an official currency.
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