A cryptocurrency as official currency
CRYPTOCURRENCY OFFICIAL CURRENCY - In an increasingly digital era, currency is also being digitized. In the field for a few years now, today the cryptocurrencies are very successful. From the most famous Bitcoin, to Ethereum up to the Nfts, in the financial landscape there are more and more coins that belong to the blockchain. Their use and importance is such that in Norway there is a country that has adopted a cryptocurrency as its official currency.
Hamid-Reza Khoyi introduces us to cryptocurrencies
"Cryptocurrencies are a digital representation of value that is based on cryptography. Put in simpler terms, they are nothing more than virtual currencies that are managed by an immutable shared data structure called blockchain. The blockchain makes cryptocurrencies secure. This is because it keeps track of all transactions executed, anonymously and accurately." explains Hamid-Reza Khoyi.
One of the best-known cryptocurrencies with a very rosy future ahead now is Bitcoin and Ethereum. These two have many similarities, but also many differences. The first, and perhaps even the most important difference is that if Ethereum can be issued without limits, Bitcoins have a maximum limit beyond which you can’t go. A similarity is that both do not refer to a physical currency already in existence and in use, but are independent of them.
In Liberstad the cryptocurrency becomes the official currency
The Liberstad community, founded in 2015 in Norway, adopted a cryptocurrency as its official currency. This choice is part of the project managed by Liberstad Lift, on which the city is based. The idea is to make Liberstad an independent city where the coin is the City Coin. This cryptocurrency does not run on the blockchain, but on its equivalent City Chain, that is the platform that allows you to design, build and use next-generation services for smart cities and their inhabitants, which will also have a municipal app. The transactions that can be done with the City Coin are many, from the payment of salaries to the purchase and sale of properties, up to the payment of daily services, such as those received by the barber.
The future of smart cities with cryptocurrency as official currency
At the moment Liberstad is the only smart city, but the project has been very successful and many other communities want to follow the example. What is fascinating is the possibility of smart cities to escape from government control, as you can see from the words of John Toralf Holmesland, head of Liberstad Drift AS:
"We want a society where people decide about themselves and can live together without government authority. We want a society without government coercion, blackmail, surveillance or unnecessary violence".
For now Liberstad is already a reality, but within sovereign states how many other cities will seek the same autonomy? And how long before the Member States themselves decide to adopt a cryptocurrency as the official currency throughout their national territory? All we have to do is wait and see.
