In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto published a white paper on Bitcoin on its website, marking the beginning of Bitcoin. The purpose of bitcoin development is to get rid of the shackles of third-party institutions and establish a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Bitcoin has no issuer and is generated based on passwords and complex algorithms. In the process of circulation, it relies on the distributed database composed of many nodes in P2P network to confirm and record all transaction behaviors. This makes Bitcoin decentralized, anonymous, difficult to tamper with and difficult to track, so it is often used in illegal transactions such as money laundering, tax evasion and capital flight, which brings great challenges to global financial supervision.
In 20 19, the global social platform giant Facebook released a white paper on Libra, aiming at establishing a simple borderless currency. Libra is positioned as a stable currency based on the alliance chain. Although it is similar to Bitcoin in technology, it is not completely decentralized, but there is a management company for technical maintenance and information record maintenance. In addition, Facebook has established Libra Association with several leading companies to endorse Libra's credit. Each new Libra has a corresponding basket of bank deposits and short-term national debt as asset reserves. The emergence of Libra has been opposed by almost all national central banks and financial regulators, thinking that it will impact the legal tender of various countries and make central banks full of crises.
Mu Changchun, director of the digital currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China, has publicly stated that the digital RMB is neither an encrypted asset form such as Bitcoin nor a stable currency form such as Libra. According to the top-level design of the People's Bank of China, digital RMB is the legal tender that replaces cash under the centralized and double-tier delivery system, with legal compensation, and its functions and attributes are exactly the same as those of paper money. Digital RMB can be loosely coupled with the account to realize "double offline" payment, and even if there is no network, it can ensure the smooth completion of transactions between the revenue and expenditure parties. In addition, digital RMB will also have outstanding advantages in protecting users' privacy, improving supervision ability, reducing transaction costs and simplifying cross-border payment.
In addition, compared with Libra, digital RMB has unlimited legal compensation, while the latter does not. Although Libra's credit base is reserve assets including a basket of bank deposits and short-term treasury bonds, it has not been approved by the US financial regulators. Digital RMB is only used to replace cash, and will not involve any other currency forms such as demand deposits and time deposits; Libra covers a wider range. In addition, digital RMB supports "double offline" payment and is anonymous; Libra must be certified online, and transactions must be based on a clear account concept.
"The implementation of digital RMB is the general trend. Its appearance can not only protect the monetary sovereignty and legal tender status of China's legal tender, but also promote the circulation and internationalization of RMB while reducing the dependence on accounts in transactions. Digital currency will be the main focus of the global financial market in the future, and the country that takes the lead in launching the central bank digital currency will have a first-Mover advantage. " Song Jiaji said.
The product has not moved, and the patent comes first.
How to operate the digital RMB, how to put it into use and how to use it by ordinary people, or we can get a glimpse from the design ideas and evolution path of the digital RMB. Patent application information related to digital RMB directly shows these changes.
After patent search, it is found that there are three patent applications related to digital RMB: digital currency Institute of China People's Bank, Printing Science and Technology Institute of China People's Bank, and China Banknote Credit Card Industry Development Co., Ltd., from 20 16 to 20 19. These three companies * * * submitted 97 patent applications, and more than 58% of the patent applications focused on user functions, involving transaction exchange and transaction exchange.
Specifically, in the choice of wallet form, the design method of digital currency chip card is similar to IC phone card mode. By establishing an electronic wallet based on entity chip card, you can deposit and withdraw money at ATM terminals. This digital currency did not break away from the original bank card model based on the account system, and failed to give full play to the advantages of intelligent terminals. The wallet based on payment terminal equipment is directly set on mobile terminals such as mobile phones, which is more similar to third-party payment in experience. There are essential differences between these two forms of wallets in architecture, anonymity and dependence on account system.
In terms of the change of the underlying architecture, before 20 17, the patented technologies related to digital RMB were all distributed architecture. Using the distributed and tamper-proof characteristics of blockchain, a multi-center ledger system was established, and anonymity was achieved by assigning new addresses to each transaction. However, after 20 17, the underlying architecture design obviously tends to be centralized, and the centralized digital currency registration center records transactions, which is more extensible and avoids the contradiction between decentralization and unified supervision by the central bank.
The two-tier delivery system of digital RMB means that the People's Bank of China (digital currency issuing bank) first delivers digital currency to commercial banks or institutional banks similar to commercial banks (Bank of digital currency), and then the commercial banks or institutional banks similar to commercial banks exchange it for digital currency. This system is basically the same as the existing paper currency issuance mechanism, and has good continuity. The patent of digital currency Research Institute of China People's Bank "A method and system for realizing digital currency's deposit exchange based on digital currency" (patent number: ZL201710494153x) shows that the bank with the right to issue digital currency among commercial banks "is responsible for the transfer and confirmation of digital currency, providing digital currency wallets for storing digital currency, and making exchange based on bank accounts bound by users. Individual users can open digital currency wallets in different commercial banks and log in to different wallets through a unified digital RMB wallet entrance for operation. For individuals with bank accounts, they can directly realize the cash of demand deposits to digital currency; For individuals who don't have a bank account, they can only get the digital currency by recharging the digital currency terminal or transferring money by others. When you have digital currency in your wallet, you can conduct trading operations, including offline "double offline" operations, that is, trading through the near-field communication function of smart terminals, and online third-party payment scenarios, such as the conditional trading scenario of "payment after receipt" in online shopping.
Breaking through the barrier, the future can be expected.
The impact of digital RMB on financial technology business depends on whether the data is open or not. Payment is an important entrance for financial technology enterprises and banking institutions to collect user behavior and scenario data. The impact of the trading function of digital RMB will have a profound impact on the current traffic realization mode of using payment tools to accumulate traffic, collect customer data and provide consumer finance services, mainly involving online customer acquisition, intelligent marketing, intelligent risk control and other payment-based financial technologies or financial solutions. If the management of digital RMB can open the data analysis interface of digital currency payment transactions to financial technology companies and other companies on the premise of protecting data security and privacy, it will help to break the data island and promote the better and faster development of financial digital transformation.
Of course, some subjects in the financial industry chain can also welcome new opportunities in the process of implementing digital RMB. In Song Jiaji's view, banking IT, identity authentication and payment services are three main areas of opportunity. Whether developing digital currency system for the central bank or commercial banks, or developing user access and application systems, digital RMB is inseparable from bank IT service providers. In the technical path of digital RMB, identity authentication is an essential part, and related technologies include encryption technology and identity authentication qualification. Companies with relevant reserves in this regard may be able to usher in profits. In addition, although the digital RMB adopts a two-tier operating system, it does not exclude "wallet service providers" other than commercial banks, and manufacturers with electronic payment experience or licenses are also expected to be shortlisted for the pilot. (Li Yangfang)