Well, it is very important to acknowledge, that one of the cornerstones of sovereignty is also to be able to issue your own banknotes, etc. But, here is the catch. Since Futuria is meant to become a full-fledged internet State, that should reflect on the subject of national currency.
Everybody nowadays is familiar with so-called “crypto-currencies” such as well-known Bitcoin and others like Litecoin and Dogecoin (there are over 530 crypto-currencies on the market atm, albeit only a few with value in millions of $). So here we started to consider – why not having one just like that as an official currency of the State of Futuria. It would bring a lot of new users and lots of new possibilities to start a business for Futuria’s citizens.
The drawback of course would be the sheer complexity of the development project. We are very limited with the workforce and honestly cannot put a lot of hours into development. This would either mean postponing it indefinitely into the future (which is a bad choice) or use existing components of other crypto-currencies and work from thereon.
Another aspect to think about is safety. The safety of the system is of the highest importance. You cannot handle serious financial transactions without making sure it is safe first. There were several cases of major thefts of Bitcoins reported in last years. Even Mt. Gox, well known Japanese bitcoin exchange went out of business due to such thefts.
There are further developments, however. Vitalik Buterin is the main developer of the so-called “Etherium“, which claims to be the base for the next generation of crypto-currencies. And on top, he says, that it will enable other services to go with. Instead of turning to Bitcoin as a source of inspiration (and components), we should focus more on Dogecoin, which is different. Namely, it is oriented in a different way. Instead of being used as a currency to transfer value from one person to another and exchangeable into other, real-world currencies, Dogecoin is meant to be used only for transactions online and is not meant to be exchanged into other currencies.
Lastly, there is a longstanding problem of the “validity” of cryptocurrencies, which will, inadvertently, affect our currency as well. How to validate it better? There is a way to use the “basic income guarantee” system, where every individual, e.g. citizen receives a set sum of money each month (or another period of time), without specific pre-conditions (aside from citizenship of course). If everybody would have a certain amount of this currency available and ready to spend, and at the same time confident, that he will receive it again next time, it should drastically increase its viability in the eyes of users.