Estonia plans to digitalize the residency program and make the state-backed cryptocurrency

Good news for bitcoin and blockchain enthusiasts are coming from Estonia. This small Baltic European country was previously annexed by the USSR and became independent in 1991 amidst the Soviet Union collapse. Since then, it has demonstrated a good economy growth and joined the European Union in the early 2000s. Estonian authorities have already voiced the plans to produce the state cryptocurrency, and now it’s improving its pre-existent electronic residency program with blockchain solutions, according to Distributed.com.

The government now plans to launch an Estcoin ICO for e-residents, tells Kaspar Korjus, the head of the e-Residence program in his blog. He tells that the state can issue crypto tokens for the participants of the e-Residence. This might become the first state ICO the world has ever seen. Korjus tells this all is still just a plan the government theoretically can implement and it’s not yet the part of national policy. Vitalik Buterin, the famous creator of Ethereum cryptocurrency, is one of the consultants of this ambitious project, and he strongly supports the concept, saying this will improve the relations of e-residents with the state officials.

The author of the Distributed.com article points out that the American Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) points out that “terms like “fund” and “investment” shouldn’t be used to describe a token sale”, while ironically stating that governments have more freedom of speech than entrepreneurs on this matter. Other outlets eagerly describe these new tokens as potential rival to euro and useful for the market competitiveness of Europe.