BANGUI – The Central African Republic (CAR), a poverty-stricken and perennially unstable country despite its vast mineral wealth, has launched a memecoin, called $CAR.

 It had a tumultuous debut, experts said.

A memecoin is a cryptocurrency that rides on the popularity of a viral personality or phenomenon on the internet.

 It is often seen as a purely speculative asset. CAR President Faustin Archange Touadera announced the launch on his X account over the weekend.

“Today, we are launching $CAR – an experiment designed to show how something as simple as a meme can unite people, support national development and put the CAR on the world stage in a unique way,” he said overnight.

He recalled that his country was the second in the world to adopt bitcoin as a legal tender after El Salvador.

He hailed its resounding success, but its value plunged some 90% on Monday, specialist sites revealed, which raised fears it could be a scam.

“The infrastructure of the project raises questions. The official domain, car.meme, was registered through Namecheap, a low-cost domain provider typically used by individuals or independent developers, but rarely by government institutions,” the beingcrypto website pointed out.

The site added the domain was “registered only three days before the official announcement, which does not correspond to the classic practices of a state-wide project”.

Central African mining minister Rufin Benam Beltoungou, in a bid to douse suspicions, said in a statement issued shortly after the launch that the $CAR was “a project of the Ministry of Mines and Geology… in collaboration with the company Barn$ley”.

According to the Cryptoast website, a previous Central African cryptocurrency, Sango, “now seems to have ended in failure”. – Nampa/AFP