NASSAU, BAHAMAS — A noted regional digital currency pioneer yesterday warned that a “new type of blacklist” could be “coming down the pipeline” for this nation in light of the fallout from the collapse of crypto exchange FTX.
Gabriel Abed, Barbados’ Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and a leading authority on Central Bank digital currencies raised concerns during a Caribbean Development Bank (CBD) virtual forum discussing the implications of FTX’s abrupt collapse yesterday.
He suggested that government and regulators in the region too often lean on the expertise of foreign consultants as opposed to domestic ones.
“The truth is had you turned to experts in the region they would point all this out and say there is a very bad thing that’s about to happen, here are the things you need to do but instead you allowed an international player to dangle a carrot in front of their face and the result of it is all of us are being brunt,” he said.
“A decade of advocacy and education that persons like myself put in have all gone to waste because we in the Caribbean look like a massive banana republic that will sell our souls out to anybody. The reality is the next steps we are going to see is a new type of blacklist. That new blacklist is going to come out and say hey Bahamas you have inefficient and improper regulatory environments and controls and therefore you are going to be on this new list. That’s coming down the pipeline is going to burn us more than anything else.”
Attorney General Ryan Pinder in a recent national address praised the Securities Commission for its “swift and decisive” decisions in response to the abrupt collapse of crypto exchange giant FTX, stating that any attempt to lay the entirety of the blame for FTX debacle on this nation is a “gross oversimplification of reality.”
Pinder slammed what he called “ill-informed” speculation on the matter as he dismissed assertions that FTX came to The Bahamas because it did not want to submit to regulatory scrutiny. While asserting that The Bahamas is a “place of laws” whose integrity is characterized by the rule of law and exercise of due process, Pinder said that FTX’s collapse was easily described as a case of a very large business failure as a result of questionable internal management practices and corporate governance.
Abed, who is recognized as a pioneer in the digital currency evolution and the first entrepreneur to establish a blockchain company in Latin America, in November 2010 seemingly took a swipe at The Bahamas and Jamaica for seeking out foreign expertise to establish their Central bank Digital currencies.
“Often times you find in the Caribbean that we don’t trust ourselves,” he said.
“We have seen it in The Bahamas and in Jamaica, where they didn’t use technology built by other Caribbean personnel in the case of the Central bank digital currency. Not only did we invest it in Barbados but we built it and implemented it and they still turned around and turned to foreign actors to produce and offer what I consider inferior technology. It’s often the case that we turn to others outside of our region when we have local experts who care about our region.
Abed said: “That’s the biggest problem that our governments and regulators keep doing. Actually, our governments in the Caribbean ignore localized and domestic expertise because they think some Americans or Europeans know more than us.
“We were internationally educated and have dire care to want to see our region rise. We are going to ensure that the right methodologies and processes are implemented because this is ultimately our home,” he added.
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