China’s announcement to locally launch its digital Yuan is set to be a major catalyst that drives legacy financial systems into the era of bitcoin and decentralised money.
Throughout 2019, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) regularly hinted at the possibility of a digital Yuan as it ramped up its development of the digital token which would enable a two-tiered economic system, under which both the PBOC and commercial banks would function.
On the 24th of March, the PBOC had allegedly completed the development of all the basic functions for the currency and were believed to have moved on to drafting laws for its implementation. Now, China is seizing the moment to publish a trial version of a wallet application for the digital Yuan. In fact, Executive Director of M&A, Global Fiat, Ling Zhang confirmed this when she shared screenshots of the application on April 14, which were retweeted by Binance CEO, CZ.
China's CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) in trial already?
Execution speed. https://t.co/0Yxysj3O40
— CZ Binance 🔶🔶🔶 (@cz_binance) April 15, 2020
The application is meant to be a trial version for four cities, namely Shenzhen, Chengdu, Suzhou and Xiongan. The move comes as part of a broader project for the Xiongan area which is set to have intelligent infrastructure including a 5G network, supercomputing capabilities, big data facilities and of course, digital currencies. Some major companies such as Tencent, Alibaba, JD.com and Baidu already operate in the region and this official digital Yuan test-launch speaks to the fact that plans for the digital economy are rapidly unfolding.
Just last month, the US attempted to pass a bill that would set in motion plans for a digital Dollar, confirming the trend towards digital currency adoption on a country, state and global level. While excerpts of the digital Dollar had since been taken out of a previous version of the “Automatic boost to communities act (ABC)”, they’ve now been reintroduced as the federal government just issued a proposal to provide $2,000 per month to residents until this period of uncertainty is over.
[image credit : Total Telecom]
