Chinese Central Bank Digital Currency Might Launch November 2019

The cryptocurrency sector met with an explosive wave of hope as the Chinese President Xi Jinping recently announced that the country will take a step toward blockchain technology adoption. As the nation is prone to swift changes and quick adoption of disruptive technology, Xi’s speech might have prepared the Chinese public for a national cryptocurrency rollout in November.

China’s national cryptocurrency story is finally coming to a conclusion, as the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) is likely to launch a central bank digital currency (CBDC) next month. A few months ago, the deputy director of the PBoC made a remark stating that the bank’s CBDC will be similar to Facebook’s Libra and that it may launch in November 2019.

With the recent speech in which President Xi Jinping stated that the country will truly adopt blockchain technology, it seems likely that China plans to introduce its own cryptocurrency during the coming month, with the CBDC most likely experiencing a regional launch for the start.

Furthermore, the vice-chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges (CCIEE) Huang Qifan, stated on Monday that the PBoC is likely to be the first institution to officially launch a usable digital currency. Huang expressed his opinion when commenting on the state of Facebook’s project, whose launch he deemed potentially unsuccessful.

Speaking during the Inaugural Bund Financial Summit of 2019 in Shanghai, where several prominent leaders in the financial inclusion, fintech and wealth management sphere held discussions, Huang talked about the need for the rise of a digital age, for which traditional payment and settlement methods need to be upgraded.

According to the vice-chairman, traditional systems for transferring money, such as SWIFT, are severely outdated, costly, and inefficient. The SWIFT system was created 46 years ago and has not been significantly updated since, resulting in costly and ineffective transactions which take three to five business days to complete.

Commenting on modern options such as cryptocurrencies, Huang said that China’s PBoC is likely to be the first official institution to launch a functional cryptocurrency. ‘The People’s Bank of China has been studying DCEP (digital currency electronic payment) for five or six years, and I think the technology has matured. PBoC is probably the first central bank to introduce digital currency in the world,’ stated Huang during his speech.

The project is quite secretive and no official or unofficial information that presents a deeper understanding of the project is currently available at the time of writing. However, the adoption of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies by one of the strongest global economies in the world represent a significant next step towards reaching widespread adoption.