Staying ahead
Bravo Estonia
After e-residency
Estcoins!
Estonia could offer ‘estcoins’ to e-residents
The proposal to issue crypto tokens would make the Republic of Estonia the first country with an Initial Coin Offering (ICO).
What would happen if a country, such as Estonia, issued its own crypto tokens?
This radical question is at the heart of an ambitious new proposal that, if implemented, has the potential to benefit both the country and its fast growing community of e-residents.
‘Estcoins’ could be managed by the Republic of Estonia, but accessed by anyone in the world through its e-Residency programme and launched through an Initial Coin Offering (ICO).
Just a reminder — this is not national policy yet, but it is an idea worth considering, which has the potential to become reality.
First though, I want to tell you how we got to this point because it’s the result of another question that we asked almost three years ago, which seemed even more radical at first:
‘Estonia has just 1.3 million residents, but what would happen if our country had 10 million digital residents too?’
At that time, every citizen and resident could already obtain a secure digital identity that enabled them to access Estonia’s public services entirely online. This minimised bureaucracy and made every day life easier, especially for entrepreneurs.
So then we wondered — why stop there? Our digital infrastructure can handle far more ‘users’ than the current population.
If anyone, anywhere could also apply for a digital identity issued by the Estonian government then they too could access our public e-services and our business environment. They could then enjoy many of our same advantages online, especially when it came to starting and running a company, no matter where in the world they are.
As a result, Estonia became the first country to launch e-Residency.
At first, we didn’t exactly know who would apply and what these people would want most from the programme, but it quickly became clear that e-Residency offered huge value to entrepreneurs seeking trust, location-independence, minimal bureaucracy, low business costs and access to a wider range of fintech services.
The latest statistics show that there are now more than 22,000 e-residents signed up from 138 countries and they make an enormous contribution to Estonia in return for the opportunities that we deliver to them. In fact, the weekly application rate is currently higher than Estonia’s weekly birth rate!
The ability to start a location-independent company is now the main ‘product’ that’s driving the growth of e-Residency. If we…..
Read More : By Kaspar Korjus, Estonia could offer ‘estcoins’ to e-residents