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

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?

Re:Why a government?

[FeelGood314]

Paying your taxes is what gives most fiat currencies their value. I live in Canada. I could use barter or USD if I really wanted to for all my financial transactions but at the end of the year Revenue Canada is going to tell me that there is a specific amount that I owe them and I have to pay them in Canadian Dollars. At that point I better have Canadian dollars and as a practical point I may as well have been doing all my business in Canadian dollars all year so that I have them.

A government backed crypto currency has a number of practical advantages. Money needs to be durability, portability, divisibility, uniformity, limited supply, and acceptability. A government backed cypto currency could have all that. It also needs to be a store of wealth and a unit of account. Because of there instability no crypto currencies can be used for pricing items right now. A government backed currency could do this. (Note: in countries like Venezuela or some African countries bit coin is a very attractive way to store wealth)

Re:Oh, good...

[DontBeAMoran]

They can try if they want to. At the very least, it will be the first country-backed crypto-currency directly available to anyone in the world without needing to go through a bank, a currency exchange service or something similar.

Fiat Currency?

[Captain Ramage]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around "fiat" paper and useless metal coins versus bits. Both are very susceptible to whims of controls beyond the users' ability to maintain value.

I don't think so...

[Darkling-MHCN]

Reading the article the only source seems to be some guys blog post which is currently (unsurprisingly) down.

Estonia gave up its own currency in 2011 when it joined the EU.

I really doubt after going through all that trouble, just 5 years later they'd be contemplating giving up the Euro and circulating their own currency.

I'm calling BS