At the 3rd China Financial 40-Person Yichun Forum held recently, Mu Changchun, deputy director of the central payment and settlement department, said that the research institutes under the central bank began to develop the digital currency system as early as 20 18, and digital currency, the central bank, was "ready to go".
It is not a temporary move for the central bank to study and issue digital currency. Started from 20 14, digital currency, the central bank, and studied for five years. 20 17, digital currency research institute of the bank was formally established. At present, the Institute has applied for 74 patents involving digital currency.
At present, electronic payment in China is very developed. Why does the central bank launch the statutory digital currency? For ordinary people, the boundary between the basic payment function and the central bank's digital currency is rather vague, and the future central bank's digital currency is quite different from electronic payment in some functions. Mu Changchun said that in the past, the fund transfer of electronic payment tools had to be completed through traditional bank accounts, while digital currency, the central bank, could realize the value transfer without traditional bank accounts, which greatly reduced the degree of account transactions in the trading environment. In layman's terms, digital currency, the central bank, can be as beneficial to the circulation and internationalization of RMB as cash, while achieving controllable anonymity.
From this point of view, the introduction of digital currency by the central bank is neither a popular electronic wallet or online payment, nor a complete "reinvention" to replace the existing RMB currency system, but a brand-new encrypted electronic currency system that has a certain substitution for circulating cash.
Digital currency has swept the world. With the in-depth development of Internet technology, there are more and more mobile payment products, and all countries are developing their own legal digital currency. Denmark leads the world in cashless. Since 20 14, the Danish central bank decided to stop printing paper money and replace it with electronic payment. Sweden and Britain are also studying the possibility of replacing cash currency with digital currency.
Digital currency is the general trend. For a long time, digital currency and paper money will coexist and circulate together. For ordinary people, when withdrawing money from banks in the future, they can choose to exchange cash in kind or digital currency, which makes it easier for legal digital currency to gradually replace paper money under the existing monetary operation framework, instead of subverting the existing currency issuance and circulation system.