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Comment by VanGoghsCoffee | Hacker News Reader

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> However, crypto tokens have far more significance than their > use as a currency and don’t necessarily fall into that category. >From Estonia’s perspective, estcoins were proposed as a way to raise money and support for the development of our digital nation from more people around the world. We would also want to structure the tokens so that they help build our e-resident community and incentivise our own key objective, which is to increase the number of companies started in Estonia through e-Residency.

Don't just take the things you want to hear out of context from the original meaning. Founding more Start Ups in Estonia is a valid use case. It's also a way to fight poverty.

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OP isn't saying that estcoins won't have any valid use cases and therefore are a bad idea - they even say that estcoin could be used in a UBI experiment.

OP argues that Estonia is a member of the EU, and is therefore bound to use the Euro and only the Euro as its national currency. It seems a bit sneaky and underhanded then to launch this cryptoCURRENCY as a "token" rather than a currency.

As someone mentioned further down, estonia probably won't make estcoin a legal tender (can't be forced to accept estcoin to settle all debts in court or pay taxes), avoiding the issue of competing directly with the euro while still allowing the government to play with this new tech.

As long as Estonia is backing Estcoins with Euro reserves there shouldn't be an issue.

>Estonia is a member of the EU, and is therefore bound to use the Euro and only the Euro as its national currency

Just a nitpick, this statement isn't quite true.

>Nine countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom) are EU members but do not use the euro. [1]

The term you are looking for is the Eurozone rather than the EU.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurozone#Future_enlargement

> Denmark and the United Kingdom obtained special opt-outs [...] The other seven countries are obliged to adopt the euro in future, although the EU has so far not tried to enforce any time plan. They should join as soon as they fulfil the convergence criteria

I won't provide a separate source for this statement since it's the same as yours, just a few sentences further down.

For sure. And one notable exception to this is Sweden (sort of). While they are in ERMII - and are obligated to join as soon as they meet the criteria - they are intentionally avoiding meeting the criteria as a means of staying out of the eurozone.

as a way to raise money and support for the development of our digital nation from more people around the world

But ultimately denominated in Euros, right? Otherwise this is just "yet another crypto currency".

I'm pretty sure the country wouldn't be allowed otherwise, to set up a parallel economy with its own exchequer besides the ECB?

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