Central African Republic Launches Meme Coin 'Experiment'

President of the Central African Republic, Faustin-Archange Toudara (photo: x @CD_Dect)

JAKARTA The Central African Republic (CAR) has launched a meme-based cryptocurrency in an attempt called the President of the Central African Republic, Faustin-Archange Touadera, as a step to improve the profile of one of the world's poorest countries.

Touberera announced the launch on platform X on Sunday evening, February 9, nearly three years after its government became the first in Africa and second in the world after El Salvador in adopting Bitcoin as legal tender.

Meme coin is a crypto token that uses branding or name that refers to the meme or internet trend. This type of asset is generally very volatile and has little practical usefulness.

Last month, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, also launched a coin meme called $Trump, which quickly jumped to reach a market value of more than 14.5 billion US dollars (Rp237 trillion) before it finally plummeted.

Despite having abundant reserves of gold and diamonds, the Central African Republic remains in deep poverty and backwardness and has been hit by the violence of rebel groups for years.

The meme coin $CAR is referred to as "an experiment designed to show how something as simple as a meme can unite society, support national development, and put the Central African Republic on the world stage in a unique way," Touadera said on X.

However, a separate account created to provide updates and announcements about $CAR was reportedly suspended by X on Monday morning. February 10. Toubera said that the government was trying to get the account back on track as soon as possible.

According to data from crypto price tracker CoinGecko, the $CAR token was trading at a price of 0.22 US dollars on Monday morning.