Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Not getting the point of this

I don't think it's a "cryptocurrency" if a government backs it. After all, "dollars" are an electronic currency as well as a physical one, but that doesn't make it a cryptocurrency. I am guessing this is just an effort to make electronic Tenge transactions use blockchain.

I'm not sure what the benefit of that would be. In order for Astana to regulate its TengeCoins it would need to destroy the two advantages that cryptocurrencies have over regular currency: not being tied to a government and anonymity. (Personally, I think both of those advantages are overblown and come with a lot bigger downsides that cryptocurrency boosters are willing to acknowledge, but they are the reasons that Bitcoin et. al. have been successful.)