Seoul’s Mayor, Park Won-soon, said that he wants to launch ‘S-Coin’ to fund public welfare projects and/or pay private contractors.
Park elaborated that “Seoul is one of the cities that are leading the Fourth Industrial Revolution” and that it is “natural (for the city) to study and invest in new technologies such as blockchain.” Park did not give specifics on the plan and it should be noted that he is up for reelection as Mayor in June of this year. However, he did say that this is part of the city’s “Blockchain master plan”, which intends to publish clear blockchain and cryptocurrency rules, regulations, and to cultivate a blossoming blockchain economy.
Park’s visions follow Dubai’s reported development of ’emCash’, which intends to be legal tender for public and private debts. Berkley, CA has also pondered the idea of using cryptocurrencies for municipal bonds. The most infamous government cryptocurrency has been the Venezuelan Petro, which many people harbor doubts about and has lead to considerations by Russia, Turkey, and Iran to launch similar cryptocurrencies to evade economic sanctions. A more optimistic cryptocurrency is being launched by the Marshall Islands to reduce its dependence on the USD. The Marshall Islands has hired a fintech firm to conduct the development of the cryptocurrency leading to a more positive outlook.
Stateless money in the hands of states
One of the chief selling points of cryptocurrencies is that they operate independent of states and thus are not prone to manipulations. States creating their own cryptocurrencies has good and bad implications for the rest of the sector. On the positive side, governments are realizing the benefits of cryptocurrencies and how advantageous they can be to their citizens. Through this, government officials could create a more clear and lenient policy framework that will allow cryptocurrencies to thrive, as Seoul is pondering. In addition, the government acceptance of cryptocurrencies and even having their own coin would increase the overall adoption rate of cryptocurrencies. Conversely, on the negative side, government officials could institute more restrictive laws that only favor their government’s cryptocurrency in an attempt to gain a monopoly of the new economy. While this would not stop people from using other coins, it would impact adoption and overall economic development.
Government cryptocurrencies competing with private and independent cryptocurrencies through equivalent laws would allow the cryptocurrencies that best serve consumers to win and thrive. Private and independent cryptocurrencies would keep government officials honest with their spending since they would no longer be able to covertly manipulate their currency to hide the effects of spending since consumers could directly see the effects in the exchange rate and would be free to change currencies at any point. This would keep government officials adherent to their stated ideal goals of helping citizens and not abandon those goals for sort term or personal gains. However, government spending on cryptocurrency may not even be necessary.
Dash is able to help people as an independent cryptocurrency
There is already a hefty amount of cryptocurrency competition with each coin trying to find ways to best serve their targeted consumers. Dash has consumers all over the world as target consumers and thus have been developing Dash as such. Dash has very low transaction fees and times and is constantly working on user experience and user interface to make Dash as usable by as many people as possible. Dash has teams all over the world in South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia promoting, developing, and answering questions about Dash to make the switch from the old system to Dash, a new technology, as hassle free as possible.
One of the best ways to help people is through economic prosperity, which makes lives easier through more abundance of necessities and desires. Using well designed economic incentives, Dash grants access to very affordable and trustful methods of money storage and transfers, which puts more power in the hands of the individual consumer. This allows natural human entrepreneurship to flourish and make lives better. Dash City at the Dash Venezuela Conferences demonstrates in a country with a horrible economy from rampant government misdeeds that people will find ways to improve their own lives when given the tools and the chance. The actions of Dash proposes the thought that a government cryptocurrency may simply be more wasteful redundancy in a free market that is already beginning to accomplish the ideal goals of government.
