Former central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan talks about Bitcoin: We need to figure out what the benefits are for the real economy

On the evening of April 18, Zhou Xiaochuan, Vice Chairman of the Boao Forum for Asia and former Governor of the People's Bank of China, said that China's digital RMB is not for cross-border, but to take advantage of technological development, especially after the popularization of mobile Internet, to provide payment for the public more conveniently. "China has a very large retail market of 1.4 billion people, and everyone hopes to have a more convenient, more effective and lower-cost payment system. At the beginning, the central bank did not think about whether it needed to build a wholesale system or internationalize the RMB, but started with the retail system." Zhou Xiaochuan pointed out that it is necessary to respect the monetary sovereignty of central banks of various countries, and the use of digital technology can still greatly improve convenience, rather than adopting the approach of "unifying the world" with a certain currency. When talking about Bitcoin, Zhou Xiaochuan said that whether it is digital currency or digital assets, they must serve the entity. "We experienced the global financial crisis in 2008 and found that finance was separated from the real economy. For example, shadow banking and derivatives became purely speculative transactions between financial institutions. They were no longer connected to the real economy and were prone to problems. As a result, some leaders and traders of major international banks could not understand them and found it difficult to do a good job of internal control." Zhou Xiaochuan said that it is necessary to distinguish between digital currencies and digital assets. It is not time to draw conclusions about digital assets such as Bitcoin, but "it is necessary to remind and be careful." "In China, financial innovations must clearly state their benefits to the real economy." (Beijing News)