Ever since Donald Trump’s White House pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, Iran has been bearing the brunt of devastating trade and economic sanctions. Iran has been barred from trading with any nation after America imposed a huge raft of sanctions upon the country. Any country seen to be trading with Iran will likely be hit with similar sanctions, leaving Iran out in the cold to fend for itself. In an attempt to keep the economy going, Iran began contemplating creating its own cryptocurrency to skirt round American sanctions and trade with the world. It looks as if Iran has finally launched its first government-backed cryptocurrency – the PayMon.
Say Hello to PayMon
The technical details of PayMon have yet to be released to the public, but from what has already been presented, PayMon actually looks like a cryptocurrency with a bright future. PayMon is backed by the price of gold, while the specific amount and value of gold per coin is not yet clear, it’s one of the first cryptos out there to tokenize physical gold. Banks will now be able to tokenize their gold for a digital asset, which can then be traded using smart contracts and exchanges. If you want to get your hands on PayMon and some digital gold, you will need to head over to Iran Fera Bourse – a well-known Iranian OTC exchange. Unfortunately, it’s not available outside of Iran or countries that are friendly with Iran, so you will need to take a trip to Iran or boot up that VPN.
A Smart Way to Move Gold
Iran has vast stores of gold held in multiple banks around the world, but America has banned these banks from releasing such gold to Iran. Seeing as Iran can’t move the gold or sell it, it can now tokenize its gold – which is safely stored all around the world – and use the tokenized funds to restore power to the nation. You have to give credit where credit is due, Iran appears to have found an impressive way of skirting around American sanctions and it’s likely that other states might soon follow suit.
America Stealing Iranian Bitcoin
As soon as Trump’s administration realized Iranians were surviving by trading Bitcoin, it soon demanded that all crypto exchanges cut ties with Iranian traders or feel the full force of the American government. As exchanges didn’t want to lose out on the American markets, they decided to freeze and close down Iranian owned accounts, taking 500 BTC in the process. This left Iranians with no money for food and shelter. However, many are saying that these traders should have been smarter and stored their crypto in a cold wallet and not on an exchange.
PayMon looks set to have far-reaching consequences and could inspire a new wave of government-backed cryptos designed to skirt around sanctions. Hamas is already looking at crypto for financing, PayMon could be the next logical step for the group.
