UPDATED 11:23 EDT / DECEMBER 10 2019

BLOCKCHAIN

Bank of Lithuania plans to release blockchain-based collectible coins

The Bank of Lithuania today announced its intent to release blockchain-based collectors coins.

The virtual coins will be dedicated to the Feb. 16, 1918 Act of Independence of Lithuania and its 20 signatories and the coins will be issued next spring.

As the country’s central bank, the Bank of Lithuania is tasked with issuing the currency of Lithuania and formulating and implementing monetary policy. This means that the bank itself has the authority to mint and produce currency, which gives it the extraordinary power to produce state-regulated digital and collectible coins and tie that to blockchain technology.

“This innovative coin will feature the signatories due to their significant role in the country’s history and contribution to the restoration of our independence,” said Marius Jurgilas, member of the board of the Bank of Lithuania. “Quite a few of them could be called innovators of their time, as they created and brought progress to Lithuania.”

The bank intends to use this minting of virtual coins using a blockchain distributed ledger as a touchstone for experience in the creation and management of virtual currency. “It is especially relevant now since central banks tend to discuss these topics more openly and an outline of such currencies is slowly starting to emerge,” added Jurgilas.

The plans include the release of 24,000 collector tokens created using blockchain technology. Each token will feature one of the 20 signatories and collectors will have the opportunity to purchase the entire set. Tokens are divided into six categories, separated by the signatories’ areas of activity, with 4,000 tokens allotted to each.

Upon purchase, buyers will receive six randomly selected digital coins and only upon collecting a token from each of the six categories will they be able to redeem a physical silver coin.

Blockchain technology has been repeatedly successful in representing collectible and tradable tokens as the technology uses cryptography and distributed ledgers to represent unique transactions. Although the tokens are digital in nature, their “ownership” is represented by cryptographically signed transactions on the blockchain, which allows the holder of those keys to prove ownership and trade those tokens.

The most prominent example of blockchain currency, bitcoin, currently has a market cap that exceeds $132 billion and executed a trading volume of $18 billion in the past 24 hours. Digital trading cards, which behave like physical cards in collectability, have also been represented by the Ethereum blockchain, enabling collectible card games such as ”Spells of Genesis” from EverdreamSoft SA and “Gods Unchained” from Immutable.

In honor of the independence document signatory date, the physical silver coin will bear an unconventional denomination, €19.18 (approximately $21.26), while its size and form will resemble a credit card, which will depict the Act of Independence and its signers.

“I attempted to do a modern take on the historic photograph of the Council of Lithuania that many remember from a history book,” said Giedrius Paulauskis, designer of the digital collector coin. “The digitized picture consists of more than 36,500 pixels – the approximate number of days that have passed since the Act of 16 February 1918.”

In the press release, the Lithuanian central bank noted its interest in researching blockchain technology and that this unconventional coin mint would help it gain knowledge and experience in that industry. The project would also be used to assist Lithuanian companies to carry out blockchain-oriented research and adapt that technology to the financial sector.

Image: Bank of Lithuania

A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU