The Central Bank of Lithuania is making preparations to issue the first digital coin in the Euro-Zone according to Reuters.

“No one in the central bank community was thinking about digital currency seriously before we realized that there is a legitimate threat that someone else will take our space,” declared Marius Jurgilas – deputy governor of Lithuania’s central bank.

The digital coin called LBCOIN is based on blockchain technology and 24.000 thousands LBCOIN will be put on pre-sale in the second week of July.

LBCOIN is a CBDC – Central Bank Digital Currency and differs from the other 2000 cryptocurrencies currently in existence which are designed to be free from government manipulation and control and are created and transactions across decentralised systems. The total market cap of these cryptocurrencies is currently around 246 billion USD.

Other countries are trying to launch their own digital currency but in Europe Lithuania is the first one.