The Central bank of Tunisia has announced the launch of its digital currency in partnership with Russian Startup Universa Blockchain. The digitized Tunisian Dinar will be called E-Dinar.

A percentage of every transaction will be received by Universa which it justifies by saying that the cost of issuing the digital currency will be ‘100 times cheaper’ than issue of liquid money. Moreover they will not have access to any encryption keys or permission to see records.

According to Universa CEO Alexander Borodich, the fee is worth it because:

“Electronic banknotes cannot be faked – each such banknote, like the paper version, is protected by cryptography, it, like the paper counterpart, has its own digital watermarks. And the production of such a banknote is 100 times cheaper than wasting ink, paper, electricity for the printing press.”

It is important to note here that this digital currency is not a cryptocurrency. It is going to be issued by the Central bank whereas a cryptocurrency has to be mined by an individual. The details of every transaction will be available to the central bank. This means that Tunisia’s digital currency, like cryptocurrencies, is traceable and protected but unlike cryptocurrencies, it is state-owned.

Although Tunisia is the first country to issue digital currencies, as reported by BitcoinNews previously, countries such as Canada and Singapore have also hinted their efforts towards digitizing their respective currencies.

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