Chea Serey has been named one of the 50 most influential people in CoinDesk’s annual list of crypto movers and shakers.
The cryptocurrency news site picked the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) Assistant Governor and Director General of Central Banking for her work promoting the Bakong Project. The digital wallet was launched in October last year and has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.
It allows users to send and receive money by using a QR code, a phone number or a name on their contact list. The app consists of an e-wallet, allowing mobile payments and other online banking functions and also gives overseas Cambodians the ability to send money home to their families, following a deal with Malaysia’s biggest bank, Maybank.
Serey says Bakong is not a central bank digital currency but an attempt to streamline the vast array of online banking services offered by various Cambodian lenders that don’t communicate with each other.
It is also part of NBC’s move to encourage e-commerce and help the majority of Cambodians who don‘t have a bank account.
“The main objective of Bakong Project is to provide an easy, fast and low-cost payment system allowing Cambodian people get access to financial services,” Serey said.
The NBC Assistant Governor joins an impressive list of crypto contributors, including Tesla boss Elon Musk who was picked for promoting Dogecoin and showing the dangers of influencers on crypto markets and US Federal Reserve Bank Governor Jerome Powell, who CoinDesk describes as “likely the most influential man in crypto, as he is in all markets”.
FTX Chief Executive Officer Sam Bankman-Fried was chosen as the most influential person in the crypto world this year “For naming stadia FTX and becoming crypto’s richest and cleverest twentysomething.”
Bankman-Fried went from trading derivatives in Hong Kong to owning a crypto exchange worth an estimated $25 billion.
CoinDesk called 2021 a massive year for crypto “when long-held theses were validated and many once sci-fi concepts became relatively mainstream.”
It pointed to the growing number of celebrities who have embraced non-fungible tokens, the increasing popularity of decentralized autonomous organizations and wild swings in the price of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies.
“Crypto today means more than it did a year ago and much more than it did a decade ago,” CoinDesk said.
“It takes in the future of money, the future of culture, perhaps the future as we know.”
The 50 Most Influential list was put together through readers’ suggestions, which were then assessed by staff in two rounds of meetings.
This article was first published in Khmer Times. All contents and images are copyright to their respective owners and sources.
