Bitcoin Daily: 7,000 Crypto ATMs Worldwide, Data Says; Marshall Islands Plans National Digital Currency

The blockchain for the Marshallese sovereign (SOV) digital currency will be developed with Algorand technology, according to an announcement.

The supply of SOV will be set to increase at 4 percent yearly to stop inflation from occurring. It will be debuted via a token pre-sale, with rights to future SOV offered in multiple auctions with a time-release monetary issuance (TRMI).

The appointed organizer for the initiative, SFB Technologies, tapped the Algorand protocol because of its scalability, speed, security and its “ability to effectively implement required compliance controls and the transaction finality needed for a national currency.” Algorand created a permissionless, open source and pure proof-of-stake blockchain technology. The Algorand protocol is the brainchild of Silvio Micali, a Turing Award-winning cryptographer.

“Algorand was selected after extensive market research among the leading protocol options,” SFB Technologies Co-Founder and CTO Jim Wagner said in the announcement. “The company has already powered several mainstream use cases and thanks to its unique features the platform has the functionality required to issue, manage and distribute the SOV on a global level. This partnership ensures that the SOV will be built on a scalable and secure platform.”

In other news, more than 7,000 digital currency ATMs now exist throughout the world, Cointelegraph reported.

There are said to be 42 makers responsible for the machines, and the world was introduced to the concept of a bitcoin ATM in 2013. At that time, Robocoin put a machine in a café in Vancouver. The machine reportedly experienced $10,000 in BTC transactions on the day of its rollout, and it let users exchange bitcoin for cash as well as cash for bitcoin.

Miami International Airport received a bitcoin ATM in the second half of last year, while another bitcoin ATM firm collaborated with a mall operator in the U.S. in the fall of 2019.