Iran is considering to launch its own cryptocurrency

Iran cyberattacks

According to foreign media Neowin, Iran’s Minister of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) recently said that the country is considering launching its own cryptocurrency. The news came a few days after Venezuela introduced its cryptocurrencies, each with one Venezuelan barrel of oil as a physical mortgage. Both countries view cryptocurrencies as a way to allow money to flow into their countries and basically avoid the sanctions imposed by the United States.

Venezuela and Iran will also be among the first countries to formally adopt cryptocurrencies.

By Farzaaaad2000 in Persian Wikipedia (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

An article on Twitter by Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi of Iran’s Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) states:

““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.””

On Wednesday, Venezuela‘s Nicolas Maduro tweeted that the new cryptocurrency has raised $ 735 million. Iran and Venezuela are all members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), so if Iran were approved and developed eventually it could also use 1 barrel of crude oil as a physical mortgage.

Cryptocurrencies are beginning to enter a new phase where governments are deploying them. In addition to Iran and Venezuela, Russia has expressed interest in developing a product called CryptoRuble.