Those who are paying attention today get greater insight into the eventual development of a national Chinese cryptocurrency that seems to be headed toward the global market soon.
According to reports in Hong Kong Economic Journal project ejinsight, Deputy Director of the People’s Bank of China’s payments department Mu Changchun made comments today about the nature of a coin developed by China’s central bank.
The major take-away for many is that the Chinese coin would apparently look a lot like Facebook’s controversial Libra stablecoin – in other words, a stablecoin backed by powerful financial institutions instead of a pure decentralized consensus model such as the ones behind Bitcoin and Ethereum.
In additional comments, Changchun said the bank is pursuing the initiative “to protect our monetary sovereignty and legal currency status.”
“We need to plan ahead for a rainy day,” Changchun said.
Changchun also noted how gigantic Chinese retail platforms like Tencent and Alibaba and their respective partners would utilize the functionality of a new national digital coin.
The Chinese have been working on the idea since 2014, but now we get some clues fleshing out how this type of digital coin would look.
The breaking news today also underscores the propensity of the Chinese for moving deliberately in innovation, and not just shooting from the hip. Amid the profound context of a developing trade war with seemingly capricious actions on the American side, understanding Chinese developments in this light can be particularly helpful.
Chinese officials note that the national coin might be unveiled as early as this November. Marie Huillet at Cointelegrapg further notes the foundational presence of Libra as a catalyst of sorts.
“Chinese academics have also claimed that the unveiling of Libra had sparked debate among local regulators and motivated the project’s designers to involve more non-governmental institutions in the currency’s development and issuance process,” Huillet writes.
Look for all of the groundswell you’d expect with this type of central bank innovation late this year, or early next year.
