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Joel Telpner reveals some of the steps the Marshall Islands is taking to launch its national digital currency.
The Marshall Islandsâ project says its creation of a digital sovereign currency, named SOV, aims to be a âgame-changerâ. It could also pioneer how governments respond to crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, Joel Telpner, chairman of Sullivanâs Fintech and Blockchain Practice and Marshall Islands crypto advisor, highlighted that the project still faces âa lotâ of challenges ahead, but looks forward to making the work ârewarding.â
The current phase of SOVâs project
Telpner said that the Islandsâ government is currently in an 18 month phase. Theyâll be issuing whatâs called âpreSOV,â which will later convert into SOV. He states:
âThat 18-month period allows us to issue the preSOV in stages and specify the amounts to test the infrastructure while weâre doing it so while preSOV is coming into the market, weâll be able to test the network, weâll be able to test the blockchain. Weâll test all the regulatory and compliance provisions, and weâll be able to test the technology.â
The Sovereign Currency Act of 2018 passed on February 26, 2018, allowing the nation to start developing its digital currency project.
As for the preSOV, the lawyer says theyâre hoping to begin issuing the preliminary token within âthe next couple of monthsâ. They admit that they still need to refine the way cryptocurrency is presented to people who donât have a technology background.
Telpner clarified:
âWhat the Marshall Islands decided to do was to instead of issuing the currency all at once, which when youâre launching a legal tender, putting it in the market all at once is not a good idea.â
Marshall Islands could be referenced by other small nations
The Marshall Islandsâ SOV advisor also spoke about how the project can be a reliable reference for other countries who want to follow the same path. They believe that âthis is a good way for the government to empower the people of their countryâ and to create a âself-sovereign identity.â
On the role that these types of digital currencies could play amid the COVID-19 crisis, Telpner commented:
âThink about how much better and more efficient it would have been if we had a digital currency combined with a self-sovereign identity that would have allowed the government to quickly and efficiently get those payments of people that weâre entitled to them.â
However, Telpner says that the digital currency does not have to rely specifically on blockchain technology:
âWhether or not blockchain solutions become a favored form of creating, issuing, and distributing digital currency, I think, is yet to be seen.â
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