The news just arrived here in Finland and we gotta say that we're very impressed with our little brother Estonia!
Estonia has just placed a landing page for raising money by issuing a token called "Estcoins".
The country is pretty forward thinking when it comes to technology – they are the first nation to offer an e-Residency program. The program is almost like a digital citizenship, and lets participants take advantage of a host of government services, including start a European Union-based company without actually setting foot in the country.
Estonia has just 1.3 million residents, but what would happen if our country had 10 million digital residents too?
At that time, every citizen and resident could already obtain a secure digital identity that enabled them to access Estonia’s public services entirely online. This minimised bureaucracy and made every day life easier, especially for entrepreneurs.
E-residents and service providers gathered offline in Tallinn for an e-Residency roundtable
If anyone, anywhere could also apply for a digital identity issued by the Estonian government then they too could access our public e-services and our business environment. They could then enjoy many of our same advantages online, especially when it came to starting and running a company, no matter where in the world they are.
As a result, Estonia became the first country to launch e-Residency.
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has a keen interest in Estonia's development as a digital nation and has provided valuable feedback for the estcoin proposal.
He believes estcoins could be used to incentivise investors to support the success of a country in a way that is not currently possible through existing means of raising international finance.
"An ICO within the e-Residency ecosystem would create a strong incentive alignment between e-residents and this fund, and beyond the economic aspect makes the e-residents feel like more of a community since there are more things they can do together,” says Buterin.
"Additionally if these estcoins are issued on top of a blockchain (they could possibly be issued in multiple formats at the same time, nothing wrong with this) then it would become easy and convenient to use them inside of smart contracts and other applications."