Hello, DCEP, bye, Bitcoin
Editor's Note: This article comes fromStar Media STARMEDIA (ID: Star_Media1)Editor's Note: This article comes from
Star Media STARMEDIA (ID: Star_Media1)
Star Media STARMEDIA (ID: Star_Media1)
The central bank's digital currency DCEP is "coming out after a long time".
Since August this year, news about the central bank's digital currency has continued. In August, Mu Changchun, then deputy director of the Central Bank's Payment and Settlement Department, publicly stated that the relevant personnel of the Digital Currency Research Institute have been "996" since 2018, and the central bank's digital currency can now be said to be ready to come out. On October 28, at the first "2019 Bund Financial Summit", Huang Qifan, vice chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said that the People's Bank of China's research on the central bank's digital currency DCEP has matured, and the People's Bank of China is likely to be the first in the world. A central bank launching a digital currency.
DCEP is the synthetic abbreviation of "DC/EP". The full English name is Digital Currency/Electronic Payment, which includes two parts: digital currency and electronic payment. currency item. DCEP will be equivalent to RMB and can be freely converted into RMB. In addition to changes in currency issuance, DCEP will also change my country's financial operating system, domestic and cross-border payment methods.
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The Dilemma of RMB Cross-border Payment
RMB internationalization has been on the way.
In 2009, six national ministries and commissions led by the People's Bank of China jointly issued the "Administrative Measures for the Pilot Project of RMB Settlement in Cross-border Trade", and the State Council decided to carry out the pilot project in five cities including Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Dongguan. Since then, the RMB has officially entered the field of international settlement, starting a historic journey towards internationalization.
After the start of the pilot program, the RMB settlement business for cross-border trade has developed very rapidly, and soon gained customers in more than 100 countries and regions around the world, covering industries including electronic products, machinery manufacturing, communication equipment, and electrical appliances.
In 2011, the RMB settlement volume of cross-border trade exceeded 2 trillion yuan, and the RMB settlement volume of cross-border direct investment exceeded 110 billion yuan. In the same year, after the successful trial of cross-border RMB settlement business, it was officially promoted and implemented nationwide.
In November 2014, according to SWIFT data, the renminbi replaced the Canadian dollar and the Australian dollar, and became the fifth largest payment currency in the world after the US dollar, the euro, the British pound and the Japanese yen. At the same time, the scope of business has expanded from simple trade in goods to trade in services, direct investment, and overseas loans from domestic banks, and the settlement volume has been significant year after year.
The rapid growth of the demand for RMB cross-border payment and settlement volume has also increased the requirements for clearing channels and financial infrastructure. Cross-border RMB settlement is an important channel for RMB internationalization, which determines the degree of RMB internationalization.
In 2015, in order to further integrate RMB cross-border clearing channels and improve the efficiency of RMB cross-border payment and settlement, the People's Bank of China began to use the RMB cross-border payment system CIPS (Cross-border Interbank Payment System). modern payment problems.
In the existing RMB payment system, there are four types of banks participating in cross-border RMB settlement: overseas clearing banks, domestic agency banks, domestic settlement banks and overseas participating banks. In the settlement process, commercial banks are the most critical settlement channels, which require the cooperation of domestic banks and overseas banks to complete, which poses a challenge to banks' settlement capabilities. It is an urgent task for commercial banks to study cross-border RMB settlement channels, improve settlement models, and improve settlement efficiency.
The three modes of cross-border RMB business settlement include the "clearing bank" mode, the "correspondent bank" mode and the "RMB NRA account" mode of cross-border RMB settlement. Under the clearing bank model, Hong Kong and Macau clearing banks are directly connected to the large-value payment system, and other clearing banks are connected to the large-value payment system through their head offices or parent banks. All clearing banks rely on the large-value payment system to complete cross-border and offshore RMB settlements Serve. Under the agency bank model, domestic agency banks are directly connected to the high-value payment system, and overseas participating banks can open RMB interbank current accounts at domestic agency banks for RMB cross-border and offshore fund settlement.
However, none of the three liquidation models can be called models, but only three liquidation channels. Because, in the entire clearing chain, it is a crucial cross-border link, that is, the transfer of RMB funds between overseas clearing banks and domestic settlement banks is completed through SWIFT, which means that my country's RMB cross-border payment system CIPS is almost completely It depends on the SWIFT system to complete.
In addition, the payment experience of end users is not satisfactory. In international trade, payment is a common concern of both sides of the trade, and it is also an important link in the generation of settlement risks. With the development of network information technology, more and more enterprises choose electronic payment, and electronic payment needs to go through the clearing process of many financial institutions such as the sending bank, the central bank, the agency and the receiving bank, and the various institutions also need to spend more money. Establishing an agency relationship for a long time, the cross-border payment procedure is complicated, the intermediate settlement cost is high, the processing speed is slow, and the settlement efficiency is low.
Huang Qifan said that in the past, personal cross-border transfers needed to cross payment institutions, banks and international settlement networks, and the entire process was inefficient due to serial processing. In this context, there is no future for relying on the SWIFT and CHIPS systems, which are slow to update technology and whose security is difficult to guarantee.
RMB internationalization has entered a critical period, and RMB cross-border settlement is the top priority, but now it has become an important bottleneck.
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The Threat of the Super-Sovereign Monetary System
If the problem of the cross-border payment system is "internal troubles", then the internationalization of RMB is still facing many "foreign troubles".
Wang Xin, director of the Research Bureau of the People's Bank of China, said, "Behind the currency are interests, power, politics, international politics, and diplomacy."
After the financial crisis in 2008, Bitcoin came out, and after that, digital currencies dominated by Bitcoin and USDT swept the world. On June 18, 2019, the international social giant Facebook released its Libra white paper.
Internationally, super-sovereign currencies represented by Bitcoin and Libra have begun their viral spread, and sovereign currencies are facing the threat of international super-sovereign currencies.
Compared with Bitcoin, Libra is even more unacceptable to regulators in various countries. Bitcoin can at least be controlled by shutting down exchanges and other means. Libra has 2.7 billion users as a basis, and Facebook can manipulate the economies of various countries in an instant. If Facebook only controlled public opinion in the past, then with Libra, Facebook will have the ability to paralyze the economy of any country that uses Libra in large quantities, or even collapse the regime. In an instant, the many demonic and complex international political issues that will be caused by the release of Libra have become the focus of attention of governments around the world.
If more financial companies use Libra transactions, then there will be more financial assets denominated in Libra. At that time, the Libra Council will become a de facto super central bank, and Libra will also become an independent currency with its own currency. Independent monetary policy, thereby manipulating the global economy.
The central banks of various countries are well aware of this prospect, but they cannot stop the attack of super-sovereign currencies.
Zhou Xiaochuan, the former governor of the People's Bank of China, once predicted that a more international and globalized currency may emerge in the future. It is a strong currency, which will lead to the exchange relationship between major currencies and it.
Huang Qifan once publicly stated that in the digital age, some companies try to challenge sovereign currencies by issuing Bitcoin and Libra. This kind of blockchain-based decentralized currency is divorced from sovereign credit. The basis for issuance cannot be guaranteed, and the value of the currency cannot be stabilized. Really form social wealth. He said, "I don't believe that Libra will be successful. For sovereign countries, the best way to implement the right to issue currency is for the government and the central bank to issue sovereign digital currency."
In response to the birth crisis of super-sovereign currencies, central banks of various countries have begun to scramble to study sovereign digital currencies, laying out a new game of international currencies in the future, and "unifying the world."
Amid internal and external troubles, China's "cash reform" is imperative.
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From the 1994 ban to embracing the blockchain
In 2017, my country issued the September 4th ban, which completely stopped ICO and completely shut down the cryptocurrency trading platform. However, the underlying technology blockchain used by Bitcoin has created new opportunities for the internationalization of sovereign currencies, and also provided a new model for cross-border payments.
The core advantage of blockchain technology is "decentralization", that is, in the entire blockchain system, there is no need to introduce any third-party intermediary, and the rights and obligations of each node and between nodes are the same. Going free, a single node will not affect the normal operation of the entire system.
Therefore, the application of blockchain technology to sovereign currency and its cross-border payment can ensure the transparency and openness of transactions between the two sides of the trade, effectively reduce the risk of international trade cross-border payment and settlement risks, and improve payment security and efficiency.
At present, central banks and commercial banks around the world are exploring payment and settlement services based on blockchain technology. 24 governments have invested in and built distributed accounting systems, and more than 90 multinational companies have joined different blockchains. in the chain alliance. Many central banks such as the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada, and the Riksbank are all developing legal digital currencies. Countries such as the European Union, Japan, and Russia are studying the construction of an international encrypted currency payment network similar to SWIFT to replace SWIFT. More and more financial institutions and blockchain The chain platform is testing the cross-border payment through the blockchain, bypassing the SWIFT and CHIPS global payment systems with practical actions.
China's DCEP will lead the innovation of the central bank's digital currency.
DCEP will establish a new cross-border payment system for the internationalization of the RMB, and then use the existing international user base of WeChat Pay and Alipay to increase the depth and breadth of the nationalization of the RMB, and easily enter the mainstream payment systems of countries around the world. Make the renminbi stronger and bigger, and realize the global payment of sovereign currency one step ahead.
More importantly, there is no global unified standard for digital currency, and DCEP may imprint its own mark on the unified standard.
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The benefits and challenges of DCEP issuance
Key words such as "adhere to the centralized management model", "M0 replacement", "two-tier operating system", and "satisfy high concurrency performance" have outlined the general outline of "DCEP" for us.
According to Huang Qifan, DCEP greatly reduces the dependence on accounts in the transaction process, which is conducive to the circulation and internationalization of RMB. At the same time, DCEP can realize real-time collection of data such as currency creation, bookkeeping, and flow, and provide useful reference for currency release, monetary policy formulation and implementation.
After the release of DECP, in addition to changes in currency issuance, the underlying technical implementation of personal cross-border transfers will also be rewritten. Because blockchain technology can be used as an interface technology between payment institutions and commercial banks. The multiple parties in the cross-border remittance pass the remittance message to each participant through blockchain technology, so as to realize multi-party collaborative information processing, parallelize the original serial processing between institutions, and improve the efficiency of information transmission and processing. Driven by the big data platform and blockchain technology, a new clearing and settlement network is constructed.
Although the detailed technical white paper on DCEP has not yet been released, and DCEP is not even necessarily issued based on blockchain technology, this carnival of digital RMB has already begun, and different people have different purposes. go to.
If you think rationally, you will know that the issuance of DCEP still faces many challenges and difficulties. "Premature birth" is not feasible, and it still needs to be "polished".
Fan Yifei once pointed out in an article that the issuance of central bank digital currency by a major country is a complex systematic project. Wang Yongli, the former vice president of the Bank of China, stated in the article "Challenges to the Operation of the Central Bank's Digital Currency" that if we look at specific details such as "digital currency exchange mechanism", "preservation and use of digital currency", and "coordinated operation of digital currency and electronic currency", If you analyze it, you may find that the implementation of the central bank's digital currency is still a big challenge.
People in the blockchain industry are looking forward to the operation of DCEP based on blockchain technology, but it is impossible to guarantee the super-large volume and stable operation of DCEP with only a digital technology of blockchain. What's more, blockchain technology is still in the exploratory stage, and it is well known that it is "difficult to implement", and it is currently impossible to realize the deep integration of blockchain technology and cross-border payment.
At present, the central bank has not preset a technical route in the process of promoting DCEP. Blockchain is only one of the underlying technologies. One of the prerequisites is to reach at least 300,000 TPS.
The standard of 300,000 transactions per second is technically unattainable for the current blockchain, not to mention that the global inter-bank fund settlement is on the order of trillions of dollars every day.
Moreover, how to balance "anonymity" and "controllability" is also a major problem in DCEP issuance. After the implementation of DCEP, the payment data will be anonymous, but this anonymity must be "controllable". As Mu Changchun pointed out, the central bank's digital currency must ensure the anonymity of both parties while ensuring the three antis (anti-money laundering, anti-money laundering, Anti-terrorist financing, anti-tax evasion).
It is worth mentioning that the issuance of DCEP may break the existing RMB entry and exit controls.
As we all know, China has extremely strict control over the entry and exit of RMB. Unless specifically permitted, ordinary people can only carry a maximum of 20,000 yuan or foreign currency equivalent to 5,000 U.S. dollars. If the excess is found by the customs, they may be fined and confiscated, or even bear criminal responsibility.
In the past, underground banks would secretly remit money overseas using a cross-border remittance method commonly known as "counter-knocking". But every year, the foreign exchange management department cooperates with the customs and public security organs to crack down on this kind of behavior. The regulatory agency can dig out underground money houses through abnormal transfers between domestic bank accounts, and impose huge fines and 5-10 years in prison.
In recent years, the rise and transaction of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have become a new way for many people to bypass bank account supervision and cash entry and exit supervision to achieve cross-border flow of funds.
After the 1994 Movement, the channel to buy bitcoins is still unimpeded. In China, ordinary people can bypass supervision and cash entry and exit controls through encrypted trading platforms to transfer funds out.
Most of those digital currency exchanges that claim to have moved overseas are operating in China, and more than 90% of their users are domestic citizens. They also provide off-site transaction guarantee services for the flow of domestic RMB to overseas. Ordinary users only need to use RMB to transfer to Their over-the-counter transaction guarantors are in domestic bank accounts, and they only need to wait for less than an hour before depositing the USDT exchanged with reference to the exchange rate of RMB into US dollars into the account opened by the user on the exchange.
