The crypto market is on course to grow faster than ever. While on one hand, many countries are expressing their acceptance towards cryptocurrencies and ICOs, on the other, big corporations like Google and Microsoft are also banning crypto ads.
Simimulatneouly, many are positive about the use of ‘the blockchain’ technology but they barely understand its use cases.
One of such examples is national cryptocurrencies i.e. nation states issuing or planning issuance of their own cryptocurrencies.
Wondering why we need national cryptos?
Well, it is so because governments around the world don’t want to have decentralized currencies that are outside of their control. Plus, countries like China see it as a threat to their national currencies.
That’s why they want to issue their own nation-backed cryptocurrencies which are nothing but a digital form of fiat money. Also, some countries have inferred that using national cryptocurrencies will help them in better accounting and save a lot of printing costs.
Many countries have either resorted to launching their own national cryptocurrencies or have at least started thinking in that direction.
Here is the comprehensive list of such countries:
Countries With National Cryptocurrencies
1. Dubai (UAE)
- Cryptocurrency Name: Emcash
Dubai launched the world’s first state-backed cryptocurrency in 2017 known as Emcash. Emcash tokens run on their own native blockchain and can be used for various government and non-government services, such as daily coffee, children’s school fee, utility charges and money transfers. With this step, Dubai is all set to become the world’s first blockchain-powered government by 2020.
2. Venezuela
- Cryptocurrency Name: Petro
Venezuela is the second country to launch its own national cryptocurrency named Petro. Petro was launched in February 2018 after its announcement in December 2017. It is claimed to be backed by the country’s oil and mineral reserves and is intended to supplement Venezuela’s plummeting Venezuelan Bolívar currency. The Venezuelan government also intends to use the national cryptocurrency as a means of circumventing US sanctions and accessing international financing.
3. Estonia
- Cryptocurrency Name: Estcoin
Estonia, a country in Northern Europe which is very welcoming of cryptocurrencies in general, had announced in August 2017 about its plans of launching a state-backed cryptocurrency on Ethereum. But it has not been launched yet and remains a proposed cryptocurrency under the name ‘Estcoin’ which will be launched via an ICO or token sale.
Vitalik Buterin was quite supportive of this idea and said, “An ICO within the e-residency ecosystem would create a strong incentive alignment between e-residents and this fund, and beyond the economic aspect makes the e-residents feel like more of a community since there are more things they can do together”. Estonia can soon become the third country in the world after UAE & Venezuela to launch its own national cryptocurrency.
4. Russia
- Cryptocurrency Name: Crypytoruble
Recently, Russia has been particularly interested in launching its own cryptocurrency to circumvent the US sanctions. Moreover, when the interest comes directly from their President Vladimir Putin, you should take it seriously, because in October 2017 Putin ordered the creation of Russia’s national cryptocurrency largely referred to as the Cryptoruble.
However, on the contrary, the Russian Central bank hasn’t shown much interest in launching the Cryptoruble yet. In this back and forth process, there are chances that Cryptoruble might come into existence sometime in mid-2019.
5. Sweden
- Cryptocurrency Name: E-Krona
Meanwhile, another European nation Sweden is contemplating its state-backed cryptocurrency and it looks like they are very close to their launch date.
The new Swedish cryptocurrency will be known as E-Kroan through which Sweden aims to go totally cashless. Therefore, Sweden’s central bank, Riksbank, wants to launch an equivalent digital form of cash and will launch it in 2018 through the IOTA blockchain.
IOTA is popular cryptocurrency in the open-source decentralized market that works on ‘Tangle’, a directed acyclic graph based data structure which has no blocks, no chain, and no miners.
6. Japan
- Cryptocurrency Name: J-Coin
Japan, one of the most welcoming countries for cryptocurrencies in the Asian region has also been contemplating its government-backed cryptocurrency since 2017. What they call J-Coin, is expected to be launched ahead of Tokyo Olympics in 2020. J-Coin will supplement Yen (JPY) and will be pegged to JPY in 1: 1 fashion through which citizens will be able to buy goods and services.
Other Countries Going In This Direction
There are many other countries, developed and developing, that are thinking in this direction. That is because the digital government backed cryptocurrencies can help them evade sanctions, ease accounting and reduce the cost for the nations.
On the downside, it will also help inflate the national currency virtually with no cost through nation-backed cryptocurrencies, which can be a little problem in the long run.
Some more countries are:
- India
- China
- US
- UK
- Ecuador
- Canada
- Israel
That’s all from my side in this article. I will be back with some more interesting and useful information soon. Until then, keep enjoying the crypto revolution with CoinSutra.
Also, let us know what you think about the concept of national cryptocurrencies in the comment section below.
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