GOVERNOR Arnold I. Palacios’s veto of a Senate local bill that would have allowed internet gaming on Tinian and established a “Tinian stable token” was highlighted by multiple media entities in the global blockchain and digital industry.
Cointelegraph reported that Palacios “has killed the legislation that would have allowed one of the territory’s local governments to launch a fully backed U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin.”
Binance Square described the veto as a “missed opportunity for Tinian to become the first U.S. government entity to issue a stablecoin, potentially ahead of Wyoming.”
The Cryptonomist stated that the bill’s rejection was “a historic opportunity missed for Tinian’s stablecoin, the Marianas US Dollar” or MUSD.
According to Block Media, the veto “cast significant doubt on the realization of the MUSD stablecoin initiative, with its launch now appearing improbable.”
It stated that the proposed stablecoin “was designed to be fully backed by cash and U.S. Treasury bonds. The Tinian Department of Finance was slated to oversee its reserves, while the technology infrastructure for its operation would have been provided exclusively by Marianas Rai Corporation, headquartered in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands.”
In an email interview on Wednesday, Marianas Rai Corp. co-founder and technology chief Vin Armani, who is also president of the Trade Council of the Marianas, commended the leadership of Tinian for their “impressive work over the last year to use the tools at their disposal to bring prosperity not just to Tinian, but to all of the CNMI.”
He said the vetoed bill “represented the efforts of dozens of experts and professionals, over many months, to provide a means for bringing significant tax revenue, in the hundreds of millions of dollars per year, to the municipal and central government, while having no casinos or gaming within the Commonwealth.”
Armani said “the internet gaming regime developed by Tinian would have blocked players in the CNMI or any U.S. state or territory from participating in the gaming, while verifying and tracking all players and funds in the gaming ecosystem using the latest technology.”
In addition, the “creation of the first U.S. government-issued stable token would have beaten Wyoming’s own efforts and put the CNMI on the map as a jurisdiction that supported innovation in the hottest tech industries, which, in and of itself, would certainly have spurred billions of dollars in investment in the next decade.”
“This was a missed opportunity of epic proportions,” Armani said. “Hopefully, stakeholders can learn from this experience, and hopefully, we will educate ourselves more when opportunities to right our economic ship and diversify our economy become available again.”
On Friday, the governor vetoed Senate Local Bill 24-1, citing the advice of Attorney General Edward Manibusan, who stated that the Tinian and Aguiguan Legislative Delegation does not have the authority to enact legislation that would regulate a matter “that is not exclusively a local matter or an activity that can be clearly restricted to the Second Senatorial District [Tinian], as provided in 1 CMC [Section] 1402 and in Article II, Section 6 of the CNMI Constitution.”
However, the bill’s author, Sen. Jude U. Hofschneider, said internet gaming “is already in our gaming initiative.”
Tinian Local Law 20-5, which then-Gov. Ralph DLG Torres signed on Oct. 30, 2017, amended the Revised Tinian Casino Gaming Control Act of 1989, to provide for internet gaming on Tinian, Hofschneider added.
He said they will look into the AG’s legal concerns “and go from there.”
