Israel

This month a new phase in cryptocurrencies began, with the introduction of a series of national cryptocurrencies, including Auroracoin (Iceland), Spaincoin (Spain), Aphrodite Coin (Cyprus), Gaelcoin (Ireland and Northern Ireland), and Scotcoin (Scotland). Now, to add to that list, is the new Isracoin. The idea of a national cryptocurrency is kind of counter-intuitive. By their very nature, cryptocurrencies should be borderless. National cryptocurrencies have some advantages, however, in that they are more easily understood by the average person on the street, and the average vendor in the marketplace. As they have all been started with the idea of giving out currency to people (and sometimes businesses and non-profits) in those countries, there is the potential for a much larger percentage of people in those countries to have their particular national cryptocurrency, than for any place to have a high percentage of Bitcoin users, for example. What all of these cryptocurrencies have in common is that they're based on giving out small amounts of currency to all residents or citizens (depending on the currency) of their respective countries (called an 'airdrop'). How this is done differs among the different efforts. For example, Gaelcoin is only pre-mining 1% of the 650M total coins to…