Is Iran Planning To Launch A Gold-Backed Virtual Currency To Avoid US Sanctions?

U.S. President Donald Trump has attacked Bitcoin (BTC) and virtual currencies a few days ago on his Twitter account, saying that virtual currencies are used by criminals and facilitate illegal activities. Now, Iran could be developing its gold-backed virtual currency.

Iran Works On Its Gold-Backed Virtual Currency

According to a recent report released by CCN, Iran is going to be using gold held int its central bank to back the value of the tokens they are going to create on a blockchain network. There are going to be some Iranian companies working on this new digital asset.

This is something that could increase the tensions that currently exist between the United States and Iran due to the latter’s nuclear program.

As reported by Mehr News, Shahab Javanmardi, the CEO of FANAP, an Iranian communications technology firm, commented:

“The Iranian cryptocurrency is backed by gold but its function is similar to foreign rivals. The domestically encrypted money is to ease the optimal use of Iranian banks’ frozen resources.”

At the moment, there is no further information about this virtual currency or how it is going to be regulated in case it is released to the market. A few weeks ago, authorities in the country seized ASIC miners to a group of individuals that were mining in Yazd province.

There are other governments that are analyzing the possibility to issue digital assets. However, most of these documents and reports are just testing the market rather than really working on crypto solutions for the whole population. Indeed, the only country that launched a cryptocurrency backed by natural reserves is Venezuela.

The Petro is a virtual currency that was launched by the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro in 2018. At the moment, there is no clear use case for this digital asset that has not achieved mainstream usage in the country as of yet.