China Charges Ahead With a National Digital Currency (nytimes.com) 38
The electronic Chinese yuan is now being tested in cities such as Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing. No other major power is as far along with a homegrown digital currency. From a report: Annabelle Huang recently won a government lottery to try China's latest economics experiment: a national digital currency. After joining the lottery through the social media app WeChat, Ms. Huang, 28, a business strategist in Shenzhen, received a digital envelope with 200 electronic Chinese yuan, or eCNY, worth around $30. To spend it, she went to a convenience store near her office and picked out some nuts and yogurt. Then she pulled up a QR code for the digital currency from inside her bank app, which the store scanned for payment. "The journey of how you pay, it's very similar" to that of other Chinese payments apps, Ms. Huang said of the eCNY experience, though she added that it wasn't quite as smooth.
China has charged ahead with a bold effort to remake the way that government-backed money works, rolling out its own digital currency with different qualities than cash or digital deposits. The country's central bank, which began testing eCNY last year in four cities, recently expanded those trials to bigger cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, according to government presentations. The effort is one of several by central banks around the world to try new forms of digital money that can move faster and give even the most disadvantaged people access to online financial tools. Many countries have taken action as cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, which has recently soared in value, have become more popular. But while Bitcoin was designed to be decentralized so that no company or government could control it, digital currencies created by central banks give governments more of a financial grip.
China has charged ahead with a bold effort to remake the way that government-backed money works, rolling out its own digital currency with different qualities than cash or digital deposits. The country's central bank, which began testing eCNY last year in four cities, recently expanded those trials to bigger cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, according to government presentations. The effort is one of several by central banks around the world to try new forms of digital money that can move faster and give even the most disadvantaged people access to online financial tools. Many countries have taken action as cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, which has recently soared in value, have become more popular. But while Bitcoin was designed to be decentralized so that no company or government could control it, digital currencies created by central banks give governments more of a financial grip.
Leave it to China to burn coal to ruin the planet (Score:2)
Current blockchain technologies are way too carbon dependent to be tolerable as a major currency.
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> Government that wants to track you
Track... you wish that's all they intend to do.
If they want to completely confiscate all your money they don't even need to contact a bank or search your house for cash. They can toggle a bit.
Re: Not only that... (Score:1)
Combine that with their "social credit" system, and you got a true dystopia. Literally a Black Mirror episode.
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That would mean they can't manipulate it at will, and if there's one thing about China's gov we all know it's that they won't give up a modicum of power, even if it will help the people
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Or just deactivate the money of political protestors.
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Citation? A quick check shows the median savings account was around $7K five years ago, with the mean closer to $30K. Hell, people with household income LT 25K had median savings account size closer to $700 than to 200....
Oh, and if you want to quibble mean versus median, the median numbers were much lower than the mean numbers....
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TFA says eCNY does not use a blockchain. This is a centralized system, not a distributed ledger.
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History gave a nice warning: (Score:5, Informative)
https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Cash (Score:4, Insightful)
I like cash. I'm sticking with cash.
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But, of course, not *literal* cash, except in amounts that are practical to carry around in your wallet. If your'e stuffing your mattress with $20 bills, that's probably going too far.
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That's what she said.
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I like cash. I'm sticking with cash.
Did you pay cash for your house?
Danger Will Robinson (Score:4, Insightful)
Australia was very early to adopt debit card payments and now it is very rare to pay with cash as everyone taps.
It reminds me of a prophecy in the Bible from the book of revelation where it says nobody will be able to buy and sell without the mark of the beast.
With cancel culture now being established, and cash slowly being eliminated, the opportunity for abuse against those with wrong think (in the case of Revelation, Christians, but many others will get caught up) will be highly likely... butI fear this is a slow freight train that won’t be stopped.
OP Misses Some More Interesting Aspects of Article (Score:5, Interesting)
The other aspect of course is that the digital currency helps shed light on the underground / shadow economy by forcing more transactions into the open - economic transactions, both legal and illegal, that are not reported to the government ranging from under-the-table contractor expenses (income tax), off the book sales (retail tax), and criminal activity. This could help reduce tax avoidance and make it harder to launder money, but on the flip side, it could give the government much more direct visibility into individuals spending habits without having to negotiate with third parties like banks, credit card firms, or tech companies.
The final interesting aspect of this is that in China, this is essentially the People's Bank of China nationalizing digital payments that had previously been dominated by WeChat and Alibaba. Digital payments had created an alternative payment system that was outside of sovereign control of the Central Bank, and the steps with eCNY is an effort to retake control of the currency and remain relevant especially after Jack Ma started challenging domestic banking regulations.
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Perfect total surveillance of transactions. (Score:2)
I suspect certain other currencies will be usedfor privacy, and be instantly labeled "criminal activities" and made illegal.
So expect the US and EU to imitate China. Once again.
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I suspect certain other currencies will be usedfor privacy, and be instantly labeled "criminal activities" and made illegal.
So expect the US and EU to imitate China. Once again.
So you thought the US SWIFT system doesn't already track all transactions? Why do think FB Libra got shutdown so quickly before it was even born?
The US doesn't need to "imitate" China, the US is already leading the way in total surveillance decades ahead. The difference is just the how the data collected was used, and against whom.
A token will be generated not mined. (Score:2)
Sucks to be you, Chinese citizenry (Score:2)
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I hear the Chinese government is planning to call the fundamental unit of their new digital currency the Phuk-yu.
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you left out "Last Day"
sanction busting tool (Score:1)
Looks promising for Venezuela and Iran as they will be able to do trade without using dollars, or even without using banks which can be targeted by sanctions. Issuer of digital yuan is China and won't bow down to such demands.
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Looks promising for Venezuela and Iran as they will be able to do trade without using dollars, or even without using banks which can be targeted by sanctions. Issuer of digital yuan is China and won't bow down to such demands.
Analog yuan is also issued by China. Making it digital changes nothing in this regard.
Also, sanctions are usually country on country, you are always free to trade with any country not imposing sanctions.
Why is it implied it's blockchain? (Score:2)
Just sounds like a debit card and an associated QR code.