The president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, has during an Islamic conference in Malaysia proposed the creation of a cryptocurrency for Muslim nations, as an alternative to the U.S. dollar.
According to the Associated Press, Rouhani urged during the conference for Muslim nations to deepen financial cooperation to fight what he described as the United States’ economic hegemony. Rouhani noted that U.S. economic sanctions were being used as the “main tools for domineering hegemony and bullying” of other nations.
Iran has been facing violent protests over the past month as Iranian have been revolting over a sharp rise in gasoline prices that followed U.S. sanctions being imposed on the country. Per the country’s president, the U.S. was looking to cripple Iran with the “heaviest sanctions.”
As a solution, he proposed financial cooperation between Muslim countries, including trading in local currencies and the creation of a Muslim cryptocurrency. At the opening of the three-day conference, which included leaders from Turkey, Qatar, and Malaysia, he said:
The Muslim world should be designing measures to save themselves from the domination of the United States dollar and the American financial regime.
Rouhani further proposed the establishment of a joint fund to finance technological cooperation between the nations. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pointed out that Muslim countries should focus on Islamic financing, and suggested the creation of a working group to look into it.
Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Mahathir Bin Mohamad, seemed to agree with Rouhani, pointing out this was the first time a cryptocurrency was being suggested as a solution, he said:
It looks like sometimes when we use the US dollar, there are sanctions that can curb economic development. We can use our own currencies or have a common currency.
As CryptoGlobe reported, earlier this year Iran legalized cryptocurrency mining. It’s been widely reported it launched a gold-backed cryptocurrency called “PayMon,” although there aren’t a lot of details regarding its current use within the country, if any.
Featured image by mostafa meraji on Unsplash
