Iran, a sovereign state in Western Asia has decided to lift cryptocurrency ban in September. The ban, which was imposed in the month of April, disallows state banks and other financial institutions from dealing with cryptocurrencies. Not only this, Iran has been developing a national cryptocurrency that could allow them to sidestep the crippling economic sanctions by US in place since May. Country’s leading provider of banking systems, Informatics Services Corporations has reportedly been designing and developing the cryptocurrency and has now disclosed its features.
Founded in 1993, the ISC is Iran’s major banking systems provider. It has been specialized in designing and developing national banking and payment systems. It also provides core retail banking total solutions, secure data centers and communication gateways. ISC also gives WAN solutions and high-end banking equipment. It is also affiliated to the Central Bank of Iran.
Explaining the country’s upcoming cryptocurrency, the ISC said:
It is rial-backed and has been designed and developed by Informatics Services Corporations based on Hyperledger Fabric Platform technology. The issuer is Central bank of Iran and the volume of issuance depends on the bank’s decision. Iranian cryptocurrency has been developed under private blockchain infrastructure and it cannot be mined.
This cryptocurrency will be rial-backed. The Iranian rial is the currency of Iran. Although the “toman” is not an official unit of Iranian currency, people of Iran commonly express amounts of money and prices of goods in “tomans”. The value of one “toman” equals 10 rials. Despite this usage, amounts of money and prices of other products are virtually always expressed in rials. Hyperledger Fabric is a blockchain platform application and one of the Hyperledger projects provided by The Linux Foundation. Intended as a foundation for developing applications or solutions with a modular architecture, Hyperledger Fabric gives elements, such as consensus and membership services, to be plug-and-play. Hyperledger Fabric borrows container technology to provide smart contracts called “chaincode” that makes the application logic of the system. Hyperledger Fabric was initially contributed by Digital Asset and IBM.
ISC further said that ,
The infrastructure is supposed to be as an ecosystem available for Iranian banks and active companies in cryptocurrencies area after being tested and reviewed. Other functions of this blockchain infrastructure include phase one as a token and interbank payment instrument and phase two as an instrument for retail payments in a society.
In the month of May, to counter US sanctions, the Iranian government, led by Rouhani, was already considering use of Bitcoin to ease the transfer of money and goods because of Bitcoin’s anonymous and decentralized nature. This isn’t the first time cryptocurrencies became the saving grace for an entire nation – North Korea and Venezuela are among some other countries that turned to cryptocurrencies in dire times of economic crisis.
Venezuela, the South American country that has been going through hyperinflation and an economic crisis had launched the premined cryptocurrency Petro in the month of February, and had raised over $735 million during the first day of its pre-sale. Petro is the first digital currency to be issued by a federal government. It was first disclosed by the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro. Petro is aiming to pull the country out of an economic crisis by allowing the ailing OPEC member to avoid U.S. sanctions as the bolivar currency plunges to record lows. The Petro is an oil-backed cryptocurrency and it was announced as a form of legal tender that can be used to pay taxes, fees, and other public needs. The Petro’s price depends on the price of a barrel of Venezuelan oil from the previous day. Few experts inside and outside of the country have been criticizing the feasibility and the legal aspect of the token and according to them, implementation of Petro into the Venezuelan economy is “tailor-made for corruption and Petro is not a cryptocurrency, it is a forward sale of Venezuelan oil.
MJ Azari Jahromi, the Information and Communications Technology Minister of Iran had announced about country’s cryptocurrency plan on Twitter in the month of May following a meeting with the Iran Central Bank’s Board of Directors. In that tweet, which was written in Persian, Jahromi mentioned the notion of a “digital currency-based blockchain” similar to the one in Venezuela, which will be used to “test the country’s first digital currency using the country’s elite capacity”. He also suggested the implementation of a “pilot model”, which will be reviewed and once approved, will be used to improve the “banking system of the country”.
Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Steemit, and join our Telegram channel for the latest blockchain and cryptocurrency news.