Estonia wants to launch its own cryptocurrency – The Hill

Estonia is considering taking advantage of the cryptocurrency hype to do an initial coin offering (ICO) for its own country.

Kaspar Korjus, a representative for the Baltic country, wrote that if investors showed enough interest, Estonia would issue its own cryptocurrency to raise funds.

Estoniaalready has an e-residency program where anyone in the world can become a digital resident of the country, allowing them to open a business there. It sees issuing a coin as the next step in advancing its economy and expanding its global presence.

Major investors have taken notice, too. Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, major Silicon Valley venture capital firms, invested in Filecoins record breaking ICO earlier in the month.

Its unclear how an "estcoin" would differ from other cryptocurrencies that already exist, though.

By using our APIs, companies and even other countries could accept these same tokens as payment, Korjus wrote. It will also be possible to build more functions on top of the estcoins and use them for more purposes, such as smart contracts and notary services.

Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency, is already capable of handling smart contracts and powering notary services. Rootstock allows Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, to do the same things.

A hypothetical estcoins fate being tied to a country, would also undermine its appeal to many in its community who are drawn to cryptocurrencies because there usually is no central authority to trust.

Bitcoin, for example, is decentralized and not reliant on any single hub of activity. Its not based on any single set of servers nor does it require trust in any country or institution, like "estcoin" likely would.

Korjus did not immediately respond to request for comment on this, however, Ethereums developer, Vitalik Buterin, consulted the country on the proposed coin and spoke favorably of it.

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 a community since there are more things they can do together, says Buterin.

Here is the original post:
Estonia wants to launch its own cryptocurrency - The Hill