Digital RMB has been piloted in Shenzhen, Suzhou and other places, and private exploration in Europe and the United States has become more radical.
Original title: “Looking back at the first year of CBDC: China has been drawn, Europe, America and Japan are competing to chase”
Written by: Mori Goro
Shenzhen reissues digital red envelopes, leading the world CBDC
Following the previous trial of the “Luohu Digital RMB Red Packet”, Shenzhen once again distributed 20 million digital RMB red packets on New Year’s Day. Winning users can spend without threshold at more than 10,000 designated merchants that have completed the digital RMB system transformation in Shenzhen from 8:00 on January 7 to 24:00 on January 17, and the list of specific merchants can be checked on the “i Shenzhen” reservation platform.
Shenzhen has always been at the forefront of digital RMB pilot projects. In October 2020, the Shenzhen Municipal Government and the People’s Bank of China launched the “Luohu Digital RMB Red Packet” campaign, and distributed 10 million yuan of digital RMB red packets to 50,000 Shenzhen citizens through lottery , Causing the market to pay attention to the digital RMB.
On December 5, 2020, Suzhou City carried out a pilot activity. On December 29, in order to successfully complete the pilot program for the 2022 Winter Olympics, the Beijing Metro Daxing Airport Line started a preheating pilot. Figure skating world champion Shen Xue and other event experiencers were invited to open a digital renminbi wallet, driving the popularity of digital renminbi.
In addition to China, central banks around the world are actively promoting digital currency issuance plans.
2020 is the first year of a well-deserved digital currency
In October 2020, the central banks of G7 countries and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) released a digital currency feasibility report, “Central Bank Digital Currency: Basic Principles and Core Features”.
The report assessed the feasibility of CBDC in helping the central bank achieve its public policy goals and sorted out the basic principles and core functions of CBDC. For details, please refer to the previous report of Linkde: The central banks of the seven major developed countries and the Bank for International Settlements released the CBDC report and formulated three major guidelines.
According to a survey conducted by the Bank for International Settlements in 2019, data on the possibility of personal CBDC issuance in the next 6 years show that about 40% of countries in the world believe that it is more likely.
Just one year later, in the latest report of the Bank for International Settlements at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, 80% of the world’s central banks are already evaluating the adoption of CBDC.
According to various publicly available official information last year, Europe, the United States, and Japan, which have set goals, will launch projects this month. And China is already at the forefront of the world.
In Europe and America, the thunder is heavy and the rain is small
According to the previous article “The Bank of Japan Accelerates Digital Yen Test and Announces Project Details”, this month the Bank of Japan will use the power of the Financial Services Agency of Japan to combine private companies to promote the issuance of CBDC in Japan. However, the latest news shows, At least until mid-to-late 2021, the Bank of Japan experiment will proceed to the second stage, which is the application in actual scenarios.
The European Central Bank is also preparing to start testing within 21 years, while Sweden is already conducting pilot work. However, due to the size and the spirit of linkage, G7 seems to be unable to get out of the vicious circle. On the night of October 13, the G7 Finance Minister and Central Bank Governors meeting held an emergency meeting to issue a joint statement. The main topics were the transparency of CBDC issuance and legal rectification.
On the contrary, the more radical private enterprises in Europe and America, the central banks seem to be overly redundant.
News from emerging countries
On October 28th, Chia Serey, Director of the Central Bank of Cambodia, announced that Bakong planned to complete the trial operation and has issued the digital currency “Bakong Coin”. As early as November 2016, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) introduced the Ubin project and cooperated with R3 to establish a proof-of-concept project to use blockchain technology for inter-bank payments.
In July this year, it has entered the fifth stage and is ready for commercial development. In addition, the Bank of Thailand also launched the central bank’s digital currency pilot project-the “Inthanon” project in July.
Last week, the “concept” study of the Turkish Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) was completed, and the actual testing of this currency will begin in the second half of 2021.
However, the Central Bank of the Bahamas has already started issuing the digital currency Sand Dollar on October 20. Although it remains to be disputed whether it is the world’s first legal and legal central bank digital currency, it must be said that on the road to central bank digital currency issuance, Emerging countries are a force not to be underestimated.
Facebook travels between countries
Of course, the voice of world-class technology company giants is indispensable. When Facebook, with nearly 3 billion users, launched the concept of the digital currency “Libra” (later renamed Diem) in 2019, it was the fuse of the central bank’s digital currency issuance.
Afterwards, Libra went through several twists and turns, and even changed his name to eliminate all kinds of negative impressions, but they were all hit by policy reasons, and no actual action has been taken so far. The latest news speculates that Diem, which was originally scheduled to be launched in early 2021 after the name change, is still facing strict policy pressure because of its huge popularity.
In addition, Facebook’s Diem and the British online mortgage platform Diem have the same names. According to Cointelegraph, the two parties are currently engaged in legal negotiations over the trademark.
Obviously, Facebook is at a disadvantage, Libra is renamed December, and online mortgage platform Diem has been running for some time. It is not a good sign that the lawsuit has not even started.
In addition to Facebook, payment giant PayPal and shopping site Amazon are not far behind. In addition to being a digital currency platform from time to time, they also actively participate in CBDC projects in various countries in an attempt to get a share of the pie.
Established giant companies are courageously catching up
Christine Moy, head of JPMorgan’s blockchain department, said on Twitter in October that Morgan is also considering issuing JPM Coin and is likely to be experimenting.
In Japan, the stablecoin listing of the parent company of the digital currency exchange GMO was approved. As the first and only digital currency that was benchmarked against the Japanese yen, it was not listed in the home country of Japan, but was approved by the United States for listing. The arrow is on the string.
Including Japan’s controversial stable currency J Coin since 2081, it is also promoted by major Japanese financial giants. If the Bank of Japan passes the empirical test, it will not be impossible to pick it up and reuse it. Last month, Japanese companies such as NTT Data, Mitsubishi, MUFG Bank, and Toyota Tsusho announced vigorously that a joint venture team was established to establish an import and export digital trading system, and to use blockchain technology to establish a large-scale logistics cross-border transaction system that can be directly traded.
However, Japan has always talked about cooperation, and actual actions have been relatively slow. This chain has been mentioned many times in previous articles, including the death of J Coin and the difficult advancement of CBDC. For details, please refer to the previous report of the chain: The Japanese government is trying to promote the CBDC process and calling for domestic cooperation in order to take the lead.
2020 is undoubtedly the hottest year for CBDC. After last year’s warm-up and testing, 2021 will be the year when central banks, technology giants and traditional giants fight together.
As Europe, America and Japan have always been afraid of China’s mastery of the core standards, for China, which has already drawn, there will be challenges, but more opportunities.
