The Islamic Republic of Iran has released a new cryptocurrency that is backed by gold. The cryptocurrency is named Peyman which in Persian means covenant. Ghoghnoos Company and four banks create it. The four partner banks are Bank Pasargad, Bank Melli Iran, Parsian Bank, and Bank Mellat.
As per reports from the Iranian English daily Financial Tribune, an over-the-counter exchange called Iran Fara Bourse is also expected to host the new currency.
Valiollah Fatemi, Ghoghnoos director earlier said, “Peyman will be used to tokenize banks’ assets and excess properties.” He further added, “The Peyman token can function as a wallet and stream the excess assets into the economic cycle. We seek this technology for accelerating the pace of bank transactions.”
Ghoghnoos has indicated that an initial amount of one billion units of Peyman will be launched in total. In the future, the cryptocurrency Peyman will be used for the purchase on Irana Fara Bourse. The launch of Peyman comes in the middle of speculation that Iran is trying to release a state-backed cryptocurrency called crypto-rial. This cryptocurrency is hoped to help them evade U.S. sanctions.
The sanction that was imposed by the United States has weakened the ability of Iran and its citizens to involve in business with parts countries of the world. That is primarily because SWIFT and other financial intermediaries are being prohibited from providing any kind of services to Iran.
The plans for bringing crypto-rial were arranged the previous year when Iran found cryptocurrencies as a way to evade the sanctions. When the second portion of the sanctions came into effect in November last year, Abdolnasser Hemmtai, the governor of Iran’s central bank, said that an alternative transaction to SWIFT was already being worked on.
A week after that, Iran signed a blockchain cooperation deal with Russia and Armenia. The plan was to offer access only to institutions like commercial banks during the first phase of the state-backed cryptocurrency’s rollout. And only during the second phase, individuals are to be provided with access to the state-backed cryptocurrency crypto-rial.
In in the initial stages, Iran did not foresee the use of state-backed cryptocurrency to receive payments for imports or payments for exports. This novel strategy is hoped to allow Iran to join an international payments system which will be based on blockchain technology in the future.
It’s just been a week since Iran’s central bank released a draft for cryptocurrency regulations. The launch of Peyman came in perfect timing with the draft issue. Although the regulations reversed a ban that was earlier imposed, they have yet gone ahead and imposed few restrictions on the usage of cryptocurrency. For example, the bitcoin still is not allowed to be used as a means of payment. Furthermore, a limit is set by them on the number of cryptocurrencies that every individual can hold.
Iran’s central bank has also permitted initial coin offerings, apart from allowing cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. Adding to this cryptocurrency mining, cryptocurrency exchanges, and bitcoin wallets were also allowed to be put to use.
