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Iran Is Almost Ready To Launch The National Cryptocurrency

28 January 2019 09:05, UTC

According to Al-Jazeera, the government of Iran is almost ready to launch a stablecoin which is backed by the Iranian rial. The development of cryptocurrency was chosen as a means of countering US sanctions.


“Iran’s cryptocurrency is expected to be rolled out in phases, first as a rial-backed digital token, to facilitate payments between Iranian banks and other Iranian institutions active in the crypto space, and later possibly as an instrument for the Iranian public to pay for local goods and services,”

— is mentioned in the Al-Jazeera article.

It is expected that the authorities will present the virtual currency at the Electronic Banking and Payment Systems conference, which starts on January 29 in Tehran. The theme of the conference is called “blockchain revolution” this year. According to the reports, the currency will be implemented on a private blockchain, but whether it would be based on Ethereum or any other platform, still is not clear yet.

In November, the Iranian economy suffered an impact after being disconnected from SWIFT, the global payment system. The Iranian authorities hope that the state-supported cryptocurrency could become the basis for creating an alternative international payment system run on the blockchain.

Image courtesy of ETHNews