Kaspar Korjus, Managing Director at e-Residency – developed by a state-owned foundation called Enterprise Estonia – stated they are proposing the issuing of an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) together with a token.
“A government-supported ICO would give more people a bigger stake in the future of our country and provide not just investment, but also more expertise and ideas to help us grow exponentially,” Korjus said.
The token aims to assist e-residents. A program that tries to implement the 90s vision of a global village by creating a “borderless digital world with opportunities for all.”
The highly ambitious project plans to go as far as setting up a “data embassy” that is to be granted the same protection as traditional embassies to serve their e-residents.
“This development forms part of Estonia’s broader plan to ensure its state can function entirely independent of its own territory too,” Korjus says.
In effect, this tiny country in the middle of Europe aims to grow its man-power not by birth or geography, but by a simple online form. In the process perhaps applying Darwin’s quote:
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”
And adapt to change they have. The country is probably the most advanced digitally at a state level in the entire world as they likely had no choice after Russian aggression grew during this decade, but to use all tools in their disposal to ensure independence.
One of them has been e-Residency, which allows anyone to open a bank account or set-up a business in the country, so accessing the entire European market.
It comes with a smart card, which some have turned into an ethereum wallet too. Vitalik Buterin, ethereum’s inventor, is apparently working with them. He says:
“An ICO within the e-Residency ecosystem would create a strong incentive alignment between e-residents and this fund, and beyond the economic aspect makes the e-residents feel like more of a community since there are more things they can do together.
Additionally if these estcoins are issued on top of a blockchain (they could possibly be issued in multiple formats at the same time, nothing wrong with this) then it would become easy and convenient to use them inside of smart contracts and other applications.”
The funds raised by the ICO could be used to invest in blockchain based or digital companies, to serve e-residents or they could act as a state fund investment pool.
While the token itself, potentially called Estcoin, can be used with smart contracts, Buterin says. Which may open considerable opportunities, especially in industry, to automate many processes.
It would probably also give e-residents more of a community feeling as rather than just a card they would also have their own money to accompany their digital embassy.
Instead of paying for services in dollars, euros, or one of the hundreds world currencies, they could just pay with their own borderless Estcoin, supporting their own enterprises.
This tiny rich country might then rise as an island of sorts. Far into the future than its neighbors. As their size might be their very strength. Allowing them to adapt to change faster than the rest.
