IBENA, Iran’s specialized news agency in banking and economy, and an affiliate of the Central Bank of Iran, revealed the country is recognizing cryptocurrency mining as an industry.

Secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace, Abolhassan Firouzabadi said “the policy of the National Cyberspace Center is organizing cryptocurrencies and the Central Bank as a trustee in the foreign exchange area and also a decision-making authority,” he continued to say that “the framework and final policies for trade and participation of startups and trade activists in the cryptocurrency sphere will be determined by the end of current month, but no definitive decision has been taken yet.”

Firouzabadi went on to say that “national cryptocurrency is promising and can be used as a financial transaction instrument with Iran's trade partners and friend countries amid economic pressures through U.S. sanctions.”

This will be the first occurence of a government openly using cryptocurrency to seize the influence of other governments. This is due to the fact that the rial, the currency in Iran, is at an all-time low against the US dollar. As of Sept. 5, it was at 150,000 against the dollar, according to foreign exchange websites. This is due to President Donald Trump’s sanctions against Iran.

In an effort to counter these imminent sanctions, Iran will implement its own cryptocurrency. The idea is that this will allow the government to “facilitate the transfer of money” to “anywhere in the world.” In fact, according to IBENA, the national cryptocurrency project is already underway and the details are specified according to the Islamic Republic of Iran. According to the article published by IBENA, the cryptocurrency “has been designed and developed by Informatics Services Corporations based on Hyper-ledger Fabric Platform technology.” The article goes on to say that it is “developed under private blockchain infrastructure and cannot be mined.”