Georgia just volunteered to be the pilot.
Tether — a private US corporation — and the Georgian government announced GELT last week: the Lari, on-chain, 1:1.
Read the official framing and it's "modernization, cheaper settlement, programmable payments." Read what it actually is and it's a state renting its monetary nervous system from a foreign company.
A CBDC is the thing governments say they're afraid to build — too expensive, too dystopian-looking, too much heat. So they don't build it. They just plug in the pre-made private version. Same surveillance ledger, same programmability, same kill-switch over every wallet — except now it ships as a product, maintained by someone else, for a fee.
Georgia gets control and a revenue line. Tether gets a sovereign customer and another national rail. The citizen gets a currency where every transaction is legible to two parties instead of one, and they didn't get a vote on either.
The genius of it: nobody had to say "CBDC." It's a stablecoin. It's innovation. It's a partnership. And it lands first in a country of 3.9 million where the regulatory framework was conveniently written three months before the announcement.
Pilot country. Watch what gets A/B tested here, then exported.
"When is the Palantir plugin coming out?" — will certainly ask every single Government on Earth.
Sources:
https://cryptobriefing.com/tether-gelt-stablecoin-georgia-government/
https://news.bitcoin.com/tether-partners-with-georgia-government-to-launch-gelt-stablecoin/
Tether — a private US corporation — and the Georgian government announced GELT last week: the Lari, on-chain, 1:1.
Read the official framing and it's "modernization, cheaper settlement, programmable payments." Read what it actually is and it's a state renting its monetary nervous system from a foreign company.
A CBDC is the thing governments say they're afraid to build — too expensive, too dystopian-looking, too much heat. So they don't build it. They just plug in the pre-made private version. Same surveillance ledger, same programmability, same kill-switch over every wallet — except now it ships as a product, maintained by someone else, for a fee.
Georgia gets control and a revenue line. Tether gets a sovereign customer and another national rail. The citizen gets a currency where every transaction is legible to two parties instead of one, and they didn't get a vote on either.
The genius of it: nobody had to say "CBDC." It's a stablecoin. It's innovation. It's a partnership. And it lands first in a country of 3.9 million where the regulatory framework was conveniently written three months before the announcement.
Pilot country. Watch what gets A/B tested here, then exported.
"When is the Palantir plugin coming out?" — will certainly ask every single Government on Earth.
Sources:
https://cryptobriefing.com/tether-gelt-stablecoin-georgia-government/
https://news.bitcoin.com/tether-partners-with-georgia-government-to-launch-gelt-stablecoin/
1