Estonia Proposes Estcoin, a Government Backed Cryptocurrency, Issued Via an Initial Coin Offering After e-Residency Success (cityam.com)

Estonia is living up to its digital reputation and setting tongues wagging with its latest idea: its very own digital currency issued via an initial coin offering (ICO). From a report: The buzz word of the moment in the heady world of cyptocurrencies, ICOs, are being used to raise cash via a digital token that's issued to investors. What investors get back in return depends what the company offers, much like crowdfunding, but can be some sort of stake in the company or merely being able to use the blockchain-based software it's building. But what's on offer in a potential ICO of a nation state? That's exactly what Estonia wants to work out. The head of its innovative e-residency programme has said the country is considering what the issuance of "estcoin", the country's very own digital currency, would look like. In a blog post, Kaspar Korjus said: "Estcoins could be managed by the Republic of Estonia, but accessed by anyone in the world through its e-Residency programme and launched through an Initial Coin Offering (ICO)."

Comments

Oh, good...

[hackel]

They want to go all the way back to nation-based and controlled currencies. Great. Seems like they've completely missed the point.

Why a government?

[gurps_npc]

Originally coins were issued by private groups, not governments.

But those groups had issues with trust related to greed. So governments took over, solving those greed related trust issues, and replacing them with political ones.

But the software that runs ecurriences is usually distributed among many many users, and the un-compiled code is available for examination.

This eliminates the greed and political trust issues.

Which means connecting an ecurrency to government DECREASES the trust.

In what way would you prefer an estonia-bitcoin over an international one?