Lithuania issue world’s first digital collector coin

Due for release in spring 2020, the physical silver coin will bear an unconventional denomination of €19.18, to reflect the year of the Act, whilst its size and form will resemble a credit card, depicting the Act of Independence and its signatories.

Designer Giedrius Paulauskis said:

‘I attempted to do a modern take on the historic photograph of the Council of Lithuania that many remember from history books. The digitised picture consists of more than 36,500 pixels – the approximate number of days that have passed since the Act of 16 February.’

The Bank of Lithuania is planning to release 24,000 collector tokens created using the blockchain technology. Each token will feature one of the twenty signatories and collectors will have a chance to collect the entire set.

The tokens will be divided into six categories by the signatories’ areas of activity, with 4,000 tokens allotted to each of them. When purchasing the digital coin, buyers will get six randomly selected digital tokens and only upon collecting a token from each of the six categories they will be able to redeem a physical silver coin.

The tokens will be available for purchase and storage on the Bank of Lithuania e-shop.

Marius Jurgilas, Member of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania said:

‘This innovative coin will feature the signatories due to their significant role in the country’s history and contribution to the restoration of our independence. Quite a few of them could be called innovators of their time, as they created and brought progress to Lithuania… [the virtual currency] is especially relevant now since central banks tend to discuss these topics more openly and an outline of such currencies is slowly starting to emerge.’

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