Hot off the heals of the launch of Venezuela’s oil backed coin, the Petro, it seems two more countries are looking to get in on the crypto revolution. Iran and Turkey have both made comments that indicate that they will be creating their own national currencies, each of which would be backed by the state government.
Iran’s minister of information and communications technology said (translation), “In a meeting with the board of directors of Post Bank on digital currencies based on the blockchain, I prescribed measures to implement the country’s first cloud-based digital currency.”
This decision may have been made at least in part because of the fact that Iran has been facing such strict sanctions from the United Nations, which is causing financial issues, similarly to Venezuela.
The Turkish government has also been working on possibly making a state-back cryptocurrency that would be called Turkcoin.
Neither of the countries is likely to have their new currency launched too soon, but the fact that they are considering it, or even working on it, is a big deal. The more countries that make this type of effort, the more standard crypto will become.
