Crypto-Shekel: Israel Wants to Create Its Own Cryptocurrency

Israel’s Finance Ministry official and Central Bank are considering launching a cryptocurrency. The government has been discussing whether to launch a cryptocurrency or not, which is based on the country’s national currency called shekel.

The Finance Ministry and Bank of Israel are seriously considering launching a “crypto-shekel” as a possible response to the rise in Bitcoin trading inside of the country.

The country’s Finance Ministry told Jerusalem Post, that launching the crypto-shekel will help to record transactions on mobile phones and make the tax escaping more difficult.

“You can imagine that instead of giving you a piece of paper saying the Bank of Israel on it, I can send you a piece of digital code that was issued by a central bank,” said the official.

There would be an opportunity to make transactions more faster, as they do not have to run through multiple organizations in order to complete. It will be “digital cash transfers” for peer-to-peer transactions.

“There’s a lot that people need to think about before going through with this reform. We’re looking at the legal, financial, regulatory and money- laundering sides of this,” the official added.

As The Jerusalem Post reported, crypto-shekel will be tied to the value of shekel.

Russian ministry was thinking exactly about the same thing earlier this year. Russian Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov told about running  CryptoRuble and said if they don’t do so, their neighbors in the EurAsEC will.

Israeli’s ministry and central bank don’t consider cryptocurrencies dangerous, in contrast of Russian government. They purpose is to compete with decentralized markets after creating crypto-shekel.