Seoul, the capital city of South Korea will soon use a city-funded cryptocurrency called S-Coin for everything from subway rides to kids’ allowances. This is part of a master plan to create a comprehensive blockchain bureaucracy in Seoul.
As recently as a couple of months ago, South Korea vocally opposed blockchain for a number of reasons, not the least of which was a fear that North Korea would hack it, and they went as far as considering taxing crypto-speculation and banning crypto accounts for minors.
But South Koreans are the biggest crypto-consumers after Japanese and Americans, and Korean crypto-startups raise $89m a month. So as coin-trading hysteria subsided, Seoul hired Samsung’s enterprise IT consultancy in November 2017 to coin their crypto dreams a reality.
As Seoul is the world's leading city in the field of information and communications, they are studying new technologies such as blockchains. S-Coin will be very useful as a payment means in the Korean capital which will help in the funding of public welfare programs or even for compensation of private contractors.
The initiative is part of the city’s Blockchain master plan which will help the city publish regulatory guidelines on digital currencies and also devote public resources towards the growing blockchain development sector. On implementation, Seoul will become the largest city to adopt its own digital currency. The city will be following footsteps of Dubai which is already developing a blockchain digital currency known as emCash which will act as a legal tender for both private and public debts.
Other cities which have also floated the aim of using their own digital currencies include Berkeley and CA which are aimed at tokenizing municipal bonds. The move to join the growing cryptocurrency market has also seen several governments come in like the case with Venezuela which developed its own cryptocurrency called Petro. More to that the Islands of Antigua and Barbuda are already working towards developing their own cryptocurrency exchange platform. In general, many governments are working towards using blockchain to digitize their own fiat currencies.
Many countries are preferring digital currencies to reduce their reliance on the US dollar with Marshal Islands developing their own cryptocurrency to avoid the reliance on the dollar.
In the meantime - here is a map of current landscape
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