The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A Central Bank official yesterday said there are “multiple levels of security” to protect transactions involving the Bahamian digital currency, the Sand Dollar.

Kimwood Mott, the regulator’s Sand Dollar project manager, told the Eleuthera Business Outlook conference: “As transactions take place, persons who are accustomed to using electronic payments, you recognise that there are multiple levels of communication and security channels that those transactions go through before those accounts are settled.”

Cyber security has become an increasing concern for the digital payments sector. The blockchain exchange, Poly Network, was recently attacked by hackers who stole $600m in cryptocurrency from the platform.

The Sand Dollar, however, is not a cryptocurrency but a digital representation of the Bahamian dollar. It cannot be traded on any international platform, and its value is determined by the Central Bank and its security mechanisms. And Mr Mott said: “Sand Dollar being digital allows for a fully auditable transaction trail that’s available 24 hours a day.”

The Sand Dollar also has offline functionality as well. Mr Mott said: “For our offline functionality we have offline nodes, and the way these nodes operate is that if we were over in Eleuthera and, for some reason, Eleuthera became disconnected from the mainland New Providence, any transactions that take place in Eleuthera between individual wallets will be restored in that offline node.

“Once our offline node is now connected back to the main hub here in New Providence, all of those transactions will be transferred over and be concluded. If an individual in Eleuthera still tried to send funds to an individual in New Providence that transaction would not be concluded because that individual will not be on the same node.

“So only those individuals that reside near that node would be able to transact in an offline fashion.”