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Monday, 27th July 2009 (1493 views)

The first gold coin to be produced by an internet-based country has been given its official launch.

The 24-c Wirtland Crane has been designed by Daniel Carr of Moonlight Mint, who also created the 2001 statehood quarters for New York and Rhode Island.

Wirtland was founded in 2008 as the world's first internet-based sovereign nation. Its official website describes it as an experiment into the "legitimacy and self-sustainability of a country without its own soil".

Some 661 people from five continents have become "citizens" of the state, which offers passports, identification cards and residence permits.

The Wirtland Crane is formally classed as being similar to commemorative and collectors' coins.

Although it is not designed to enter circulation, the coin has been given a symbolic denomination of ten International Currency Units.

The gold piece, which can be bought direct from Moonlight Mint, features Wirtland's coat of arms and a gold purity stamp on one side, with a migratory crane, symbolising Wirtland's transcendence of land and borders, on the other.

 

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