How Auroracoin is Forcing Digital Currency Discussion in Iceland

Although news about the digital currency has been quiet since its nationwide dissemination, the project will soon launch a gateway that will better integrate with the country's ID system in order to streamline the process via which Icelandic residents obtain auroracoin.

Iceland's Islykill national registry provides a unique identifier that is now being used to verify Icelandic residency and thus qualification for the auroracoin Airdrop distribution.

The auroracoin Airdrop has been able to dispense 1,049,527 coins to Icelanders so far - 10% of a total 10,500,000 AUR to be distributed, according to its official website.

Auroracoin was launched in February to raise awareness of the capital controls that have been in place in Iceland since the global financial crisis of 2008.

While at one time auroracoin was third in market capitalization when compared with other cryptocurrencies, it has since dropped down to 34th overall, according to Coinmarketcap.com.

After the Airdrop disbursement initiated on March 25, the price of auroracoin dropped by 50% as those receiving coins cashed them out - mostly for bitcoin on digital currency exchanges.

Auroracoin planned to give each person in Iceland with a registered Icekey number 31.8 AUR, available via a registration page on its website that was only accessible in Iceland.

The day prior to Airdrop's initial distribution on 25 March, those coins would have been worth $385. Today, with the auroracoin price at approximately $0.56, the same amount is worth less than $20. A number of people within the industry had mixed opinions on whether auroracoin's unique method of distributing coins would be effective.

The main concern some levied is that auroracoin is not permissible as a form of payment in Iceland, which might make it a purely speculative instrument and not an alternative to the country's national currency, the krona.

While Iceland's parliament has been discussing what to do about auroracoin and other digital currencies, one of the country's largest banks, Íslandsbanki, recently held an educational session on the subject of bitcoin.