It seems to have become a trend these days as by each passing day various countries announce their ideas for launching their own coins. The Marshall Islands seem to be the latest country to be following the trend as they have gone public and announced their plans for launching the world’s first Sovereign Cryptocurrency. Earlier in the month Venezuela also announced their pre-sale campaign for their own Cryptocurrency “Petro”

On February 26th the Declaration and insurance of the Sovereign Currency act 2018 was passed by the Legislators for the Pacific island nation (2011 population: 53,158)

The Republic of the Marshall Islands further revealed their intends behind issuing the Sovereign, or as its called SOV, to supplement the U.S. dollar as its legal tender.

As per the post uploaded on Sovereign’s official Telegram channel, the bill reads as follows, “The purpose of this Act is to declare and issue a digital decentralized currency based on blockchain technology as legal tender of the Republic of Marshall Islands” The bill also goes on and announces that the currency will be issued by the nation’s Ministry of Finance and introduced via an initial coin offering (ICO).

Hilda C. Heine, the country’s president, was quoted in Finance Magnates when she expressed her happiness over this idea and said:

“This is a historic moment for the people of Marshall Islands, finally issuing and using our own currency, alongside the USD. It is another step of manifesting our national liberty.”

It was also announced that the responsibility of developing the underlying and innovative technology of this proposed new cryptocurrency would be given to Neema, an Israeli start-up that promotes the transfer of international money via an app. Neema will start developing this new cryptocurrency by making use of a public protocol called “Yokwe.”

Yokwe protocol is basically a protocol designed to mitigate know-your-customer and financial crime issues by linking accounts to real, government-verified identities, as per an article posted on an Israeli technology news site, Ctech.

Barak Ben-Ezer, CEO and founder of Neema, and Roye Rahav, another person who will be actively involved in this project the project, wrote in a post on the Telegram channel, “We all dreamt of this day when the first country goes crypto,”

Ben-Ezer and Rahav further went on to add “Once we achieve success, the SOV will bring us really close to our ultimate vision of a free, more liberated world. In which money flows peer to peer, instantly and cost-effectively, and no ruler can arbitrarily print more of it,”

Reports have emerged stating that The government intends to use its ICO proceeds to make amends for the losses incurred due to the termination of U.S. reparations payments, which amounted to nearly $30 million a year, These U.S reparation payments were originally meant to compensate islanders when the United States decided to use this site as a nuclear weapons testing ground back in the 1940s and 1950s.

According to CTech, 70 percent of the funds raised will be infused to possibly reduce breaches faced in the budget due to post-reparation denied, sustainability projects which relate to climate change and green energy will be provided by ten percent of the raised funds, and the remainder of the proceeds shall be cherished by the citizens of Marshall Islands.

However, the Republic of the Marshall Islands is not the first nation to turn to cryptocurrencies to supplement its funds, as we also mentioned above Venezuela’s own token pre-sale of their coin “Petro”

A press release by Marshall islands was quick to address this situation by clarifying that the Sovereign is different from the Petro because the Republic is a “close ally of the U.S,” and the currency’s price would be as per the market demands while the Petro’s price is determined by their oil factor.

It is also rumored that Iran is also looking at the possibilities of a state-issued cryptocurrency, while Russia has also teased the notion of a “crypto-ruble.”