China’s Central bank (the People’s Bank of China) is developing its plan to launch its own digital currency in two of China’s major cities – in Shenzhen with population of 14 million people and which Is close to Hong Kong and in Suzhou, which is a historical city west of Shanghai. For the upcoming initial test which the Bank intends to begin this month it will partner with seven state-owned corporations - which four commercial banks and three telecoms: the China Construction Bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the Bank of China and the Agricultural Bank of China, along with Alibaba, Tencent and Union Pay. China condemns and bans cryptocurrencies and then launches and its own, ha! This is entirely unsurprising and yet quite amusing.
From the perspective of societal cohesion, which is China's overarching philosophy, it makes sense to ban competing cryptocurrencies.
cryptocurrency has advantage over traditional currency because it is anonymous. the digital currency from china is not anonymous, actually the government has more control
There is value in a transparent cryptocurrency issued by a state. Imagine instantaneous wire transfers that don't randomly get nicked by various intermediaries.
first of all, forget about cryptos... will never become mainstream.. I have presented the theory with the Libra case. for China - their mobile pay is already #1 in the world, not sure what the purpose is for a digital currency... between weChatPay and aliPay, you can walk around with just the phone without any cash/bank cards.... we'll see how it turns out.
Simply put: control. Governments don't like cryptos because it is out of their control. But if they are the issuer, that is a different thing. Not to mention depends on how they set it up, they can follow the money easily. Much easier than cash.
That I agree. My point was in China it’s already 95% digital already anyway with mobile pay. Very few use cash already.
It's difficult to know what everyone is purchasing without owning the blockchain. I'd imagine this won't be an actual cryptocurrency, rather a transaction record going back to the beginning of time for every citizen in China. This could allow retroactive punishments for people under new regimes and laws, and the ability to determine how good of a citizen you are based on what you are buying. Of course like all things it's "to protect people from boogieman" but in reality those who give up liberty for security deserve neither.
Control the blockchain, the token is incidental. It's about source of funds and taxation more than anything else. Sweden is about to pilot e-Krona. Meanwhile, Denmark tax authority is going after crypto tax-evaders.
They’re always looking to challenge dollar’s dominance and will try different ways to make it easier to transfer money internationally, besides tracking such transfers. This might be just one of tools to aid that effort, whether it will work or not. While I’m not sure how large commercial transactions are done internally in China besides Alipay. And how do they currently hide illegal trade & transactions. No one even needs crypto as legal tender (currently).