The Bank of Lithuania launched a digital collection coin based on a blockchain dedicated to the country’s 1918 Law of Independence and its 20 signatories.
In giving a world premiere, the central bank says the digital currency represents „a bridge between classical numismatics and rapidly evolving financial technologies.
Issued on July 23, the new Bitcoin Rush is intended to be both a national symbol and a sign of the bank’s strategic choice to drive innovation in the field of finance and payments.
„Digital money is inevitable“
Marius Jurgilas, board member of the Bank of Lithuania, provided an overview of the project objectives, indicating that
„Digital money is inevitable in the digital economy. Today, LBCOIN is what enables people in Lithuania and all over the world to try out new technologies in a secure environment, i.e. to perform all authentication procedures remotely, open an e-wallet, exchange digital tokens with other collectors or transfer them to the public NEM network“.
Mr Jurgillas added that for the bank, issuing the coin „allows us to obtain the necessary knowledge to issue digital coins from the central bank, which in turn should benefit the central bank community and the euro area as a whole“.
Symbolic capital
The LBCOIN issue consists of six digital tokens and one physical collector coin. A total of 4,000 LBCOINs have been issued: 24,000 digital tokens and 4,000 silver coins.
The physical silver collector coins have a denomination of 19.18 euros, in tribute to the year of the Independence Act of 1918. Minted at the Lithuanian Mint, their size and shape resemble a credit card and they have several symbolic details, such as the national anthem inscribed in binary code. It also features a QR code linked to the LBCOIN e-shop.
Each digital token features one of the 20 signatories to the Act and belongs to one of six categories of signatories: priests, presidents, diplomats, industry, academics and municipal officials.
Once a collector purchases a LBCOIN, with a price of 99 euros, he receives six digital tokens selected at random from the issue.
These can be exchanged for a physical collector coin, stored in the LBCOIN e-shop, sent as a gift, exchanged online or transferred to a public NEM blockchain using a NEM wallet.
Temporarily, purchases will be limited to one per person for a period of six days, after which they will be unlimited.
Beyond its acceptance of blockchain numismatics, the Bank of Lithuania also has ambitious long-term plans to develop its own blockchain platform for use beyond the financial services sector.
At the end of May, the bank’s blockchain-based regulatory environment, the LBChain project, completed its third and final stage. The LBChain network will be launched in the fourth quarter of 2020.