Consensus Décentralisé - Blockchains - Smart Contracts - Decentralized Consensus

Russian President Vladimir Putin has officially stated that Russia will issue its own ‘CryptoRuble’ at a closed door meeting in Moscow, according to local news sources. The news broke through Minister of Communications Nikolay Nikiforov.

According to the official, the state issued cryptocurrency cannot be mined and will be issued and controlled and maintained only by the authorities. The CryptoRubles can be exchanged for regular Rubles at any time, though if the holder is unable to explain where the CryptoRubles came from, a 13 percent tax will be levied. The same tax will be applied to any earned difference between the price of the purchase of the token and the price of the sale. Nikiforov said:

“I confidently declare that we run CryptoRuble for one simple reason: if we do not, then after 2 months our neighbors in the EurAsEC will.”

Embracing and rejecting

While the announcement means that Russia will enter the cryptocurrency world, it is in no way an affirmation or legalization of Bitcoin or any other decentralized cryptocurrency. On the contrary, Putin quite recently called for a complete ban on all cryptocurrencies within Russia.

The statement from Putin seemed apparently to contradict the earlier commentsfrom other ministers who seemed pro-crypto, but only with regulations, as well as Putin’s recent meetings with Buterin and others. Now, with the issuance of the CryptoRuble, the apparent contradiction has been made clear.

Fred Wilson writes : "

I agree with Naval that open protocols and the blockchains that underly them will be the driver of the next big wave of technology and that they will force big changes that will ultimately impact the global economy. That’s a big statement and I don’t make it casually. I do believe this.

The questions in my mind about this are when it will happen, which blockchains and protocols will emerge as the most important and valuable, and which nation states will embrace this and which nation states will not.

Sitting here in the US, I think the US is not likely to be one of the winners in this next big technological wave because our government and institutions are captured by the incumbent economic system and companies that define it. So many of the blockchain companies we invest in are forced to seriously consider leaving the US or get bypassed by companies and technologies that are being developed more freely outside of the US.

So what nation states are playing this game (of Risk?) better? That was the question I asked in my tweet reply and I got a lot of replies. Here are some of the top suggestions:

• China (2)
• Hong Kong (2)
• Canada (2)
• UK
• Japan (2)
• Estonia
• Georgia
• Singapore
• Switzerland
• Rwanda
• Zimbabwe
• Barbados

"