Estonia to launch their own cryptocurrency

This past week or so has seen a fair amount of negative stories surrounding cryptocurrencies from a number of governments, the below articles from www.coindesk.com are just a few of the examples:

Malaysian Finance Regulator Warns Investors Over ICO Risks
33 Cases: Cryptocurrency Fraud Is on the Rise In Japan
Russia's Central Bank Issues Warning on Cryptocurrencies and ICOs
China Outlaws ICOs: Financial Regulators Order Halt on Token Trading

The general negativity is mostly towards the inherent risks that come with investing in ICOs, while we do agree that if you are investing in ICOs you need to be particularly careful given that there is absolutely no guarantee of any return on your investment and you could even lose all of your initial capital given there are no regulations whatsoever. All of this awareness from governments could be a good thing in the long run as it may bring about some regulatory framework for token sales in the future, for now though it just appears as negative press so we wanted to give you some reassurance that there is still a lot of positivity amongst governments around cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

Introducing Estonia

Although Estonia only has a small population of just 1.3million it appears they very much at the forefront of digital technology. Estonia were in fact the first country to launch e-residency back in December 2014, this a programme for non Estonians to have access to everyday Estonian services such as banking payment processing and taxation. Currently Estonia has almost 24,000 e-residents and the weekly application rate is higher than the birth rate, further demonstrating just how popular this technology has become.

The latest announcement comes as no surprise from the Estonian government...

Estonia want to launch their own government backed cryptocurrency which will be known as Estcoin. Estcoin will be issued via an online ICO much like most other cryptocurrencies.

Kasper Korjus the managing director said in a recent blog post that "A government-supported ICO would give more people a bigger stake in the future of our country and provide not just investment, but also more expertise and ideas to help us grow exponentially," the overall aim of the project would be to create a "borderless digital nation".

Vitalik Buterin founder of the Ethereum network has offered his feedback on Estcoin in one of his blogs:

"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 community since there are more things they can do together"

"Additionally if these Estocins are issued on top of a blockchain then it would become easy and convenient to use them inside of smart contracts and other applications."

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