{"id":164981,"date":"2026-05-13T11:57:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T11:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/?p=164981"},"modified":"2026-05-13T11:57:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T11:57:26","slug":"this-country-is-going-onchain-and-ripple-rival-stellar-just-landed-the-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/?p=164981","title":{"rendered":"This Country Is Going Onchain \u2014 And Ripple Rival Stellar Just Landed The Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Stellar Development Foundation and the Government of Bermuda have announced<\/a> that the island nation will begin moving key payment and financial services activity onto the Stellar network \u2014 marking the first operational milestone in Bermuda\u2019s stated ambition, declared at the World Economic Forum in January 2026, to become the world\u2019s first fully on-chain national economy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The partnership, announced via Stellar\u2019s official press release, is not a pilot study or a working group. It is the beginning of a live deployment. Bermudian residents will be able to receive wages, pay local merchants, settle government fees, and hold, send, and receive digital assets through digital wallets on the Stellar network.<\/p>\n

Government agencies expect to pilot stablecoin-based payments. Financial institutions will be able to integrate tokenization tools. Social service disbursements are also being explored as a use case, per the announcement.<\/p>\n

Stable infrastructure that scales.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what the government of Bermuda is accessing by partnering with SDF.<\/p>\n

At @SALTConference<\/a>, @rajachak75<\/a> spoke with @BermudaPremier<\/a> about how the Stellar network\u2019s growth can power this exciting next step for Bermuda. pic.twitter.com\/graFK5B1sP<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Stellar (@StellarOrg) May 12, 2026<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Problem Bermuda Is Solving<\/p>\n

The economic case behind the move is concrete. Local merchants on the island currently pay between 3% and 5% per transaction in card processing fees, with effective costs reaching as high as 10% in some categories, according to the press release.<\/p>\n

The absence of mobile money infrastructure and continued reliance on legacy payment rails has left Bermudians absorbing costs that, in the SDF\u2019s framing, represent value leaving the island rather than circulating within it.<\/p>\n

The Hon. E. David Burt, Premier of Bermuda, addressed the issue directly in the announcement, noting that digital dollars and Stellar\u2019s infrastructure make it possible to deliver this kind of systemic change responsibly and at the scale Bermuda requires.<\/p>\n

Why Stellar<\/p>\n

Stellar\u2019s selection is not incidental. The network was purpose-built for regulated financial services \u2014 public and permissionless by design, but configurable with the asset controls that sovereign and institutional deployments require, per the press release.<\/p>\n

Transactions settle in seconds at fractions of a US cent. The network also operates one of the world\u2019s largest cash on and off-ramp networks for digital assets, a feature that matters significantly for an island economy dependent on accessible liquidity channels.<\/p>\n

Bermuda\u2019s regulatory foundation further supports the choice. The island established the Digital Asset Business Act in 2018 \u2014 one of the world\u2019s earliest comprehensive digital asset regulatory frameworks \u2014 giving the SDF a jurisdiction with existing legal infrastructure rather than a blank slate.<\/p>\n

Denelle Dixon, CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation, noted in the release that Bermuda has assembled what most jurisdictions cannot: regulatory clarity, an aligned ecosystem, and a government willing to lead.<\/p>\n\n

The announcement is not Stellar\u2019s first sovereign deployment. The Republic of the Marshall Islands completed the world\u2019s first nationwide onchain disbursement of universal basic income via USDM1 on the Stellar network in December 2025, per the press release \u2014 a precedent that Bermuda\u2019s program now builds on.<\/p>\n

This development marks a pivotal moment for the nascent sector\u2019s relationship with sovereign financial infrastructure. A national government committing to move its payment economy on-chain is no longer a theoretical use case for blockchain technology \u2014 it is an operational one, and Stellar just became the network powering the world\u2019s first attempt to prove it works at national scale.<\/p>\n

Cover image from ChatGPT, XLMUSD chart on Tradingview<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Stellar Development Foundation and the Government of Bermuda have announced that the island nation will begin moving key payment and financial services activity onto the Stellar network \u2014 marking the first operational milestone in Bermuda\u2019s stated ambition, declared at the World Economic Forum in January 2026, to become the world\u2019s first fully on-chain national […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":164982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164981"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=164981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/164982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=164981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=164981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=164981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}