Over the past week, central bank digital currencies have been at the top of the crypto conversation again, thanks to new comments from a Chinese central bank official.
Speaking at a recent event, Mu Changchun, who is deputy director of the central bank’s payments unit, said that a Chinese digital currency was
nearly ready for release after years of development.
Central bank digital currencies represent something of a third category in crypto, different from both public permissionless chains like bitcoin and ethereum, or corporate chains like
JP Morgan’s coin or Facebook’s Libra.
Notably, it seems that the emergence of Libra on the scene lit a fire under the Chinese teams responsible for their digital currency. In July, the former head of China’s central bank
said that, in response to Libra, the Chinese government should “make preparations and make the Chinese yuan a stronger currency.”
At last year’s Consensus conference in Singapore, we had Li Ming, Director of the Blockchain Research Lab at the China Electronics Standardization Institute discuss these issues. The institute is tasked with
creating technical standards for blockchains in China.
This year at Invest: Asia, we’ll be diving even deeper to central bank digital currencies. The Hon. Minister David Paul from the Republic of the Marshall Islands will be sharing more about his country’s pioneering digital currency initiative—here’s a great
Bloomberg BusinessWeek feature on it
With news breaking yesterday morning that Binance was
launching Venus, a new “localized” stablecoin project meant to collaborate with governments to provide a regional alternative to Libra, it’s clear that this conversation is heating up.
Reserve your pass to
Invest: Asia to discuss CBDCs and more of the pressing issues shaping crypto markets in Asia and around the world.
