John Rolle, the Bahamian Banking Pioneer
Since starting the world’s first central bank digital currency in late 2020, the Bahamas now has 300,000-plus “sand dollars” in circulation, and seven mobile payment providers began using the e-money earlier this year.
John Rolle
Photographer: Melissa Alcena for Bloomberg MarketsUnlike cryptocurrencies, which are valued for their anonymity and independence from monetary authorities, central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, are digital fiat—the sand dollar is simply the Bahamian dollar, exchangeable online. They also allow traditional payment service providers, which usually transact in proprietary digital tokens, to trade in a common currency, making various Bahamian PSPs interoperable.
Rolle, who’s been in his job since 2016 after senior posts at the International Monetary Fund and the Bahamian Ministry of Finance, has said the sand dollar solves numerous problems. Bahamians who live in some of the 700-island archipelago’s more far-flung locales have to travel more than a day to get to a bank; the sand dollar lets anyone with a mobile phone make common transactions. It will also be useful in the wake of natural disasters. After Hurricane Dorian in 2019, banks took more than a year to reopen some branches, leaving the economy hobbled well after the storm. Now, as soon as the first cellphone tower goes up, the government can drop emergency relief funds into digital wallets to jump-start the recovery. Soon after the Bahamas pioneered CBDCs, dozens of other countries, including China, followed suit.