The head of the European Central Bank (ECB) Mario Draghi dismissed Estonia’s idea of issuing its own digital currency on September 7. Draghi said that a Eurozone member state cannot offer any currency other than the euro.
Tallinn said in August it was mulling issuing its own cryptocurrency for use by the country’s so-called e-residents, who may not be Estonians but can run businesses in the Baltic state, nearly entirely via online services. The Estonian government prides itself on creating one of the world’s most developed digital societies.
“Estonia has just 1.3mn residents, but what would happen if our country had 10 million digital residents too?” the managing director of the Estonian e-residency programme Kaspar Korjus wrote in a blog on medium.com in August.
Korjus also said that Estonia’s proposed cryptocurrency, the estcoin, could help the country crowdfund capital to invest in development.
But ECB’s Draghi, who is concerned that the rise of cryptocurrencies such as the bitcoin could undermine the EU’s central bank’s powers in money supply, is not impressed.
“No member state can introduce its own currency. The currency of the eurozone is the euro,” Draghi told a press conference in Frankfurt.
The Estonian government is currently canvassing opinions of its idea, Reuters reported.
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