INSEAD professor and co-founder of the Blockchain Research Institute (BRI) Donald Tapscott (Don Tapscott) said that the yuan — the official Chinese currency — will become a cryptocurrency.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Tapscott said that he recently met with the vice-chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. The official stressed that the President of China, Xi Jinping, sees great potential in the blockchain technology and believes that it can play one of the most important roles in the future of the state.

A statement about the transformation of the yuan into a cryptocurrency Tapscott made in response to a question about a possible ban on mining of cryptocurrencies in China.

“It’s not really necessary to do that [to ban exchanges and mining] because in 20 years we are not going to be using Bitcoin in China. Chinese people will use the RMB, only the RMB will become a cryptocurrency. The central bank of China will turn it into a digital currency,” said Tapscott.

He also noted that the state does not limit the work of decentralized exchanges in China, but the country’s authorities intend to limit digital currencies. According to Tapscott, the decentralized exchanges will eventually outperform the traditional trading platforms due to the mandatory identification of users on the latter. Tapscott said that all assets, including traditional ones, such as stocks and metals, will eventually move to decentralized exchanges.

Note that although digital assets in China are subject to strict regulation, the blockchain technology itself is supported by the state. Currently, the country is leading in the number of blockchain projects implemented.

Author: Marko Vidrih