In the last few days, rumors had become more and more insistent that Tunisia was close to issuing its own CBDC (I talked about it in this article); these rumors had been confirmed in an article published by the Russian news agency Tass and had seemed plausible, given that, in the article, the participation of a Russian startup (the Universa) whose blockchain would have been used to allow the functioning of the Tunisian digital currency. The central bank of the country, therefore, with a subsequent press release wanted to deny these rumors and denied in full what had been circulated in recent days; the first sector site to report was CoinDesk, with an article published just a few hours ago. The Tunisian central bank, therefore, has confirmed that it is studying its own CBDC but declares that it is still evaluating the possibility of issuing it and, above all, denies having turned to companies (both domestic and foreign) to receive technological support.

While admitting, therefore, that he had considered the possibility of issuing a CBDC, the Tunisian central bank denies in the most absolute way that the imminent launch of the E-Dinar is being planned and states that, at this moment, it is focusing more than another on the digitalisation of finance, while with regard to cryptocurrencies (including a possible CBDC), it is still trying to define the impact that this kind of tools could have in terms of IT security and financial stability. The communiqué also reconstructs the facts and is, in defining what happened, particularly severe; according to what can be read on the site of the Tunisian central bank, in fact, the misunderstanding was born because of a test, carried out during the last event of the FOREX Club Tunisia (independent and without any connection with the central bank) during which, with the aim of encouraging Tunisian startups and young people to experiment, a technical feasibility demonstration was carried out on a hypothetical digital currency, initiated by a private startup. Subsequently this same test was used, concealing the context within which it was carried out, to carry out a marketing operation in which the name of the Tunisian central bank was used improperly; in practice the institution, not even too covertly, states that Universa would have used this event to advertise itself. The statement concludes by pointing out how the Tunisian central bank is preparing to launch, at the beginning of 2020, its "BCT-LAB" and a regulatory Sandbox, demonstrating how the institution remains open to all technological innovations in the banking sector and financial, regardless of the incident in which it found itself involved.