An official from Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines, and Agriculture has recently claimed the country is soon set to unveil a gold-backed cryptocurrency that’ll be mined under the central bank’s permission.
The official Shahab Javanmardi, claimed that the cryptocurrency will be mined through an agreement between the Central Bank of Iran and a consortium of private IT firms in the country. Javanmardi was quoted as saying:
The Iranian cryptocurrency is backed by gold but its function is similar to foreign rivals. The domestically encrypted money is to ease optimal use of Iranian banks’ frozen resources.
The official urged, according to local news outlet Mehr, the government to regularize the country’s cryptocurrency mining industry. The country, as covered, has been cracking down on cryptocurrency mining over the past few weeks.
In late June authorities in the country seized 1,000 bitcoin mining rigs claiming they were disrupting the electrical grid, and earlier this month a Central Bank of Iran official announced “all cryptocurrency-related activities are forbidden in Iran,” the news outlet claimed.
Earlier this year, it was revealed four Iranian banks were working with a company called Ghoghnoos to produce a cryptocurrency-based payment system. The cryptocurrency, called ‘PayMon’ is a gold-backed token based on the Stellar Lumens (XLM) network.
The cryptocurrency’s goal, according to an interview the founder of Iranian blockchain company ArzDigital did with Sputnik, is to provide a way for the country to trade around U.S.-sponsored sanctions, which have been increasing under President Trump’s administration.
The company’s founder, Hamid Reza Shaabani, added at the time details weren’t yet clear, but PayMon would be mostly traded by “special exchange offices” and that “token holders can receive gold, but the details are not clear yet.”
