sango

Central African Republic’s Sango Project announces delay of token listing

The project has marketed Sango Coin to interested parties by offering pathways to CAR citizenship through investments.

The organization following the launch of the Central African Republic’s Sango Coin has announced a delay of its listing “just for a few weeks,” citing legal and regulatory obstacles. 

In a March 31 message on its Telegram channel, the Sango Project said the government of the Central African Republic, or CAR, had made “significant progress” in establishing laws and regulations which will allow its cryptocurrency Sango Coin to be listed on crypto exchanges. However, according to the project, the Sango Coin listing will be postpone for a few weeks before the frameworks are finalized.

“There are also some other new surprises that will come along with these laws,” said Sango Project. “Rest assured that this delay is necessary to ensure that Sango is fully compliant with all relevant regulations and that our products are launched in the most secure and responsible manner possible.”

The token listing was one of the goals of Project Sango, a crypto hub proposed in the CAR in May 2022. The initiative followed the CAR government passing legislation allowing its citizens to use Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender alongside the CFA franc.

Related: Bitcoin, Sango Coin and the Central African Republic

Since the token and crypto hub were launched in July 2022, the project has marketed Sango Coin to interested parties by offering pathways to CAR citizenship through investments — a strategy reportedly declared unconstitutional by the country’s court system in August. Sango Project announced in December that the listing would be delayed due to market conditions. According to its website, the project plans to list the tokens at a price of $0.45.

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Central African Republic’s Sango Project announces delay of token listing

The project has marketed Sango Coin to interested parties by offering pathways to CAR citizenship through investments.

The organization behind the launch of the Central African Republic’s Sango Coin has announced a delay of its listing “just for a few weeks,” citing legal and regulatory obstacles. 

In a March 31 message on its Telegram channel, the Sango Project said the government of the Central African Republic, or CAR, had made “significant progress” in establishing laws and regulations which will allow its cryptocurrency Sango Coin to be listed on crypto exchanges. However, according to the project, the Sango Coin listing will be postponed for a few weeks before the frameworks are finalized.

“There are also some other new surprises that will come along with these laws,” said Sango Project. “Rest assured that this delay is necessary to ensure that Sango is fully compliant with all relevant regulations and that our products are launched in the most secure and responsible manner possible.”

The token listing was one of the goals of Project Sango, a crypto hub proposed in the CAR in May 2022. The initiative followed the CAR government passing legislation allowing its citizens to use Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender alongside the CFA franc.

Related: Bitcoin, Sango Coin and the Central African Republic

Since the crypto hub and token were launched in July 2022, the project has marketed Sango Coin to interested parties by offering pathways to CAR citizenship through investments — a strategy reportedly declared unconstitutional by the country’s court system in August 2022. The Sango Project announced in December that the listing would be delayed due to market conditions. According to its website, the project plans to list the tokens at a price of $0.45.

Magazine: What it’s actually like to use Bitcoin in El Salvador

Central African Republic court says new $60,000 citizenship-by-crypto-investment program is unconstitutional

The move comes one month after the CAR rolled out the new incentive to boost crypto innovation in the country.

According to Reuters, the Constitutional Court of the Central African Republic (CAR) said on Monday that the purchase of citizenship, e-residency and land using its government-backed Sango digital currency is unconstitutional because a nationality has no market value. Earlier in July, the CAR unveiled its Sango crypto hub to attract global crypto talent and enthusiasts, boost Bitcoin (BTC) adoption and implement new crypto regulatory frameworks. The Sango blockchain is built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, similar to a layer-2 solution. 

Part of the program includes a citizenship-by-investment program, where foreign nationals can effectively purchase citizenship in the CAR for $60,000 in crypto, with an equivalent amount of Sango tokens held as collateral and returned after five years. Similarly, e-residency can be purchased for $6,000 with Sango tokens locked for three years. It is also possible to buy a 250-square meter plot of land in the CAR for $10,000 with Sango tokens returned a decade later.

The CAR says that each Sango token will be fractionally backed by Bitcoin, which it adopted as legal tender in April. Each Sango token can be purchased for $0.10 during the first stages of its initial coin offering, with a listing price target of $0.45 by the final round. The total supply of the token is 210 million. So far, less than 20 million Sango tokens have been claimed, and officials have extended the first cycle of the sale by approximately five weeks.

Affluent investors typically enroll in investment-based second citizenship programs for business activities, tax mitigation and ease of travel. The Central African Republic’s gross domestic product has declined steadily since peaking in the mid-1960s. Its current passport allows for visa-free travel in 17 countries.

Sango crypto hub goes live in the Central African Republic

Central African Republic President Faustin-Archange Touadera outlined that the Sango crypto hub project will foster financial inclusion by removing the barriers to entry in the banking sector.

The Central African Republic (CAR) has launched its new government-backed Sango crypto hub initiative to foster the development of the local digital asset sector.

The Sango project follows the CAR’s adoption of Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender in April. The initiative aims to attract businesses and global crypto talent/enthusiasts, ramp up local BTC adoption and oversee the rollout of crypto regulatory frameworks and infrastructure. A metaverse platform dubbed The Crypto Island and Sango Coin is also in the works.

Speaking at the launch event on Sunday, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra outlined the vision for Sango is to have a “common cryptocurrency and an integrated capital market that could stimulate commerce and sustain growth.”

One of the key points President Touadéra emphasized was financial inclusion and the importance of citizens being able to gain access to crypto via a smartphone easily. He drew comparisons with the underutilized banking sector in CAR, which has several barriers to entry:

“The citizens will gain at every level, they will live in a country in full economic development, which means employment and prosperity. Moreover, they will benefit from virtual transactions which, in contrast to traditional banking, have the advantage of rapid access, fast execution, lack of bureaucracy, and low cost.”

“This technology will give an identity to the continent by reducing cost. This vision is perfect, and we do not have the time to wait. […] For us, the formal economy is no longer an option,” he added.

Despite the CAR president’s bullishness for the project, the World Bank stated in May that it will not be “supporting Sango” over transparency concerns and “potential implications for financial inclusion.”

Sango is backed by the CAR’s National Assembly and is being driven primarily by President Touadéra. While many specifics are yet to be detailed, a significant focus of the project will be to tokenize the country’s abundant natural resources to open up greater investment access to them.

Citizen identity and ownership of assets will also be tokenized as a nonfungible token (NFT). Additionally, Crypto Island will play a crucial part in facilitating this ecosystem and serve as a way for verified users to gain access to tokenized assets.

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The expanded Bitcoin support will also see the development of a local wallet built for BTC and the Lighting Network.