The Marshall Islands, a small country in the Pacific Ocean, has recently revealed that it hired Steve Tendon, the head of blockchain consultancy firm ChainStrategies, as its cryptocurrency advisor.
Notably the country has announced last year that it’s looking to launch its own national cryptocurrency called Sovereign (SOV). Tendon is set to help it develop Sovereign, and assist its government with “the drafting, design, and issuance of their new cryptocurrency.”
Tendon is notably the founder and President of the Blockchain Malta Association, and acts as a Chief Technology Officer at Anticipay, a fintech firm. In the past, he was a Strategic Advisor to Malta’s Prime Minister, when the nation was focusing on attracting blockchain and cryptocurrency-related companies.
Its efforts worked, as it attracted some of the most prominent in the industry, including leading cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance and OKEx, which was named “crypto exchange of the year” at its cryptocurrency conference.
Tendon isn’t, however, the only notable adviser Sovereign will have. The cryptocurrency’s Chief Economist is Peter Dittus, according to a post on SOV’s Medium blog, the former Secretary General of the Bank for International Settlements.
Dittus was quoted as saying:
Steve is one of the foremost experts in blockchain technology and regulations. [He] will assist with the drafting and designing of regulations to develop a blockchain financial services economy out of the Marshall Islands.
Per the blog post, the Marshall Islands are looking to evolve “in a similar way to the Cayman Islands,” a territory that it claims incorporates “5% of the world’s hedge funds despite having a similar population to the Marshall Islands.”
Notably, as CryptoGlobe covered, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned the nation not to launch the cryptocurrency as second form of legal tender (along with the USD). Per the IMF, the issuance of a decentralized cryptocurrency as a second legal tender would “increase macroeconomic and financial integrity risks, and elevate the risk of losing the last U.S. dollar correspondent banking relationship.”
