Iran’s new gold-backed cryptocurrency “PayMon” will be technically based on the Stellar Lumens (XLM) network (which is an open-source codebase), and will trade in “special exchange offices.” These details emerged during a Sputnik interview with Hamid Reza Shaabani, founder of Iranian blockchain company ArzDigital.

As CryptoGlobe reported earlier this month, a company called Ghoghnoos (ققنوس – “phoenix” or “gryphon”in Persian) and four national banks are cooperating with Iranian authorities to produce the PayMon system.

The principal aim of PayMon is to provide a way for Iran to trade around US-sponsored sanctions, which have been increasing under Donald Trump’s push to scuttle (and renegotiate) the Obama-era “Iran deal.”

Commenting on the potential fulfilment of gold for tokens, Shaabani said that the “contract with [Ghoghnoos] stipulates that token holders can receive gold, but the details are not clear yet.” He also said that the crypto will be mostly traded by “special exchange offices,” adding that “It’s likely that currencies will be traded in major international currency exchange points.”

Golden Ticket

Iran has been seeking to increase its internal mining production of gold and other precious metals such as copper, in the wake of sanctions which partially targeted these items. Gold has been used in past years to get around sanctions, specifically those that predated the Iran Deal. Gold has helped Iran funnel billions of dollars around sanctions, via Turkey and Turkish nationals.

It is little wonder then that the Central Asian country has eventually thawed to the idea of a cryptocurrency, which is capable of transferring value with uncensorable impunity depending on how it is designed.

Iran joins the Venezuelan government among countries to adopt a state-backed crypto, with Russia also playing with the idea – all for the same general purpose of skirting US-backed sanctions.

Also in the realm of centralized, non-public stablecoins, the JPMorgan Chase mega-bank launched its own a few days ago. The coin will not be widely available, with only entities vetted by the bank having access to the private crypto.