At a meeting of the Board of Directors of Post Bank, Iranian Minister of Information and Communication Technologies Mohammad-Jwad Azari Jahromi proposed issuing a national digital currency based on cloud technologies. According to local media, Iran's central bank is in talks with other financial institutions to establish control over digital currencies in Iran.
A national digital currency would help Tehran avoid potential US sanctions, the possibility of which has been repeatedly considered by President Trump.
In 2015, a nuclear agreement was reached between Iran and the US, UK, China, France, Germany and Russia, which resulted in the lifting of economic sanctions in exchange for restrictions on Iran's nuclear program. After being elected president, the nuclear agreement signed by his predecessor Barack Obama was criticized by Trump as "the worst agreement ever reached."
Iran remains largely isolated from major international payment processors Visa and Mastercard, including the PayPal service.
Iran's announcement to issue a national digital currency follows Venezuela's release of the world's first national digital currency "petro". According to President Maduro, the sale of oil-backed tokens generated more than $735 million in profits.
Following the successful pre-sale of petro last week, Maduro announced a new virtual token, petro oro, that will be backed by precious metals. petro oro is scheduled to be released this week.
According to https://www.rt.com
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