Digital Yuan Is Ready for Pilot Testing

December 23, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

Mu Changchun, the head of the payment and settlement decisions department of the People’s Bank of China, spoke at a financial meeting in Beijing on Saturday, where he said that the national digital currency was ready for pilot testing. At the same time, he warned about the inadmissibility of its classification as a speculative asset, to the category of which, according to him, Bitcoin belongs.

“The digital yuan is used to spend, not for speculation. It does not have the characteristics of bitcoin speculation, nor does it require a basket of assets to support its value like stablecoins,” said Mu.

The Central Bank representative also said that “at present, the digital currency DCEP [Digital Currency Electronic Payment project] of the People’s Bank of China has basically completed the top-level design, standard formulation, functional research and development, joint debugging and testing.

The next step in the project will be the launch of pilot programs. Mu did not give indicative dates. This stage will be the last before the currency is credited to the accounts of commercial banks, which will deal with its distribution among the general public.

The public reaction to these statements was mixed.

“If you don’t allow me to speculate on the digital form of the yuan, I’ll speculate on other things, like foreign exchange,” wrote a Weibo user. Another on Sina.com is quoted as saying “So there will be no fun in it.”

Mu previously said that the Central Bank of China does not set as its goal surveillance of society while developing a national digital currency.

“We know the demand from the general public is to keep anonymity by using paper money and coins … we will give those people who demand it anonymity in their transactions,” Mu said at the conference in Singapore. “But at the same time we will keep the balance between the ‘controllable anonymity’ and anti-money laundering, CTF (counter terrorist financing), and also tax issues, online gambling and any electronic criminal activities,” he added.

Author: Marko Vidrih