The National Cyberspace Center from Iran recently announced the completion of the draft for a state-backed national virtual currency project. The country is developing the project following instructions from the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. The Supreme Cyberspace Council of Iran’s deputy director-in-charge of drafting regulations, Saeed Mahdiyoun revealed the news.

Central Bank of Iran to reveal its stance on cryptocurrency project in September

According to Mahdiyoun the cyberspace authority of Iran is actively pursuing the project of national cryptocurrency and authorities are trying their best to remove all the uncertainties currently revolving around the project. It becomes all the more important for the Iranian authorities to remove all such uncertainties because the Central Bank is planning to reveal the country’s official stance on the project next month.

At present, Iran’s credit institutions banks have banned all the operations related to virtual currency in the country after the issues of money laundering first came into the limelight in December last year. Iran confirmed that it will come out with its own state-issued token so that it will not have to rely on the U.S. sanctions. Iran is of the view that having its own cryptocurrency token will facilitate the transfer of money anytime anywhere.

Iran authorities following Venezuela

The Venezuelan government introduced its first national virtual currency in February 2018. Iranian authorities seem to be following the same practice to avoid challenges within the country by adopting blockchain technology. Iran has completely banned acquiring U.S. dollars since the start of August.

The country is a bit worried about the growing tensions and threats in the crypto world regarding Iran. As per a recent report, Iran is facing crypto ransomware threat that it expects to grow. Accenture, a global management consulting firm detected the ransomware and stated in its report that the ransomware was either created by Iranian criminals or government-backed actors.

Iran is not the only country that has been affected by the controversial economic sanctions of the U.S. Recently Turkish Lira, Turkey’s national currency hit an all-time low against the U.S. dollar which is why the residents of the country started increasingly adopting and using cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin (BTC).