In an effort to restore some of the value of the Icelandic krona, entrepreneur Baldur Friggjar Odinsson has created Auroracoin, a virtual currency similar to the Bitcoin system, and intends to distribute digital coins to all 333,000 Icelandic citizens.
The Auroracoin website describes the virtual currency as:
“a cryptocurrency for Iceland. It is based on litecoin and is 50% premined. The premined coins will be distributed to the entire population of Iceland, commencing on midnight 25th of March 2014.”
The company, owned by Mr. Odinsson, is currently “mining” (creating unique identifiers) the millions needed for the giveaway. Around 10.5 million Auroracoins are needed so that 31.8 coins can be given to each Icelandic citizen.
He has advised that the project was possible “thanks to an earlier government initiative that assigned a national ID number to every citizen.” The ID numbers can be queried via a public database which will help the Auroracoin project to verify that people are getting only their fair share of coins.
Mr Odinsson also said that “Iceland kept very tight control on currency flows in and out of the country” and that “Auroracoin will be immune to centralised meddling of any sort”.
However there are stories about Auroracoin circulating, the BBC states
“Stories about Auroracoin in Iceland point out that Baldur Odinsson is a pseudonym and the company behind the project is based in Panama. One story also pointed out that Iceland’s controls on virtual currencies could stop people converting Auroracoins into a more valuable form of digital cash.”
Source: Auroracoin, BBC
