[casualwasher]

Estonia's gov is famous for adapting new things. I still remember their initiative on e-visa. Actually China is trying to do that too. But crypto coins are made to decentralize things, I wonder how these gov-lead coins will play any parts.

[DaiPlusPlus]

The PRC leadership could "own" a cryptocurrency by securing a majority of nodes in the graph under their control, either physically or by mandating the use of their software, and disallowing the exchange of user-forks off their own coin-base.

While users would always be able to use their own forks, the gov would only allow taxes and retail trade to happen with their branch, thus de-legitimizing user forks and reducing their utility (and hence value).

Also given that most cryptocurrencies are only pseudonymous, means they could "follow the money" and quite easily charge someone for handling a disallowed cryptocurrency. This is why I feel Monero is undervalued compared to BTC - as Monero has greater utility for Bitcoin's original mainstream activity: online black-market purchasing.

[liquidity-]

Privacy doesn't necessarily mean black market. Financial companies couldn't effectively compete were their IP completely public to the competition.

[the_mitsuhiko]

> e-visa

You got a link to that how? How does that work with Schengen?

[CCing]

Is not a e-visa...it called e-residency and simply is an ID card for use all the estonian services(like: open a company, pay taxes, open a bank account etc...)

It NOT GIVE a work permit in EU and of course not give a permission to travel in schengeng.

It's simply an ID card. The main difference is that: - Normally in other EU countries for have an ID card for services, you must live there, while with e-residency you can do have and do all the stuff remotely. - It's pretty useless, you can google it and see how had a lot of hype, but in real case uses, it's useless (example: yes you can open a company remotely, but if you don't live in estonia, is a mess with taxes...and having an e-residency, doesn't give you a valid visa for live+work there...so often you can't move to estonia to work, even if you have a company opened in estonia)

[jaclaz]

>It's pretty useless, you can google it and see how had a lot of hype, but in real case uses, it's useless (example: yes you can open a company remotely, but if you don't live in estonia, is a mess with taxes...

Pheew, I thought I was the only one with this opinion, given the hype there is about this thing all over the net.

To me the whole stuff seems a lot like the plans of the gnomes in South Park (but in five steps):

1) get an e-residency (please read as "pay us some little money")

2) establish an Estonia company (please read as "pay us some more money")

3) open a bank account in this or that bank (please read as "give our friends a little more money")

4) ?

5) Profit.

The only practical use I can see is to create a new sort of Double Irish:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

but aimed to the single/poor instead of large corporations, but it has to be seen how the EU will take the idea ...

[StavrosK]

You definitely aren't the only one with that opinion. If you've visited the card's homepage or tried to register for one, you'll have realized it confers almost no privileges.

[jaclaz]

Yep, and - just to get back on topic - they (the good Estonian people) are seemingly (maybe) plainning a government backed ICO:

https://medium.com/e-residency-blog/estonia-could-offer-estc...

Previous (few) comments on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15071682

[donquichotte]

I have an Estonian e-Residency. It does not allow you to reside in or enter the country. Even opening a bank account is non-trivial (as far as I've read, I tried it but gave up after a couple of hours), which makes me question the value of the e-Residency.

[zzkt]

https://e-resident.gov.ee/