|
Since Zuckerberg announced the launch of the Libra project through his Facebook account on June 18, 2019, there has been no stop in the news surrounding Libra. Although this is not the first time that a giant company in a traditional industry has entered the blockchain world, this time Facebook's approach and ambition are completely different from those of traditional companies, so it has attracted wider attention.
Before Facebook, the traditional Internet had never stopped exploring the world of blockchain . For example, Alibaba Ant Financial in China researched blockchain technology to serve the financial/payment fields. In March 2018, JD.com released a blockchain white paper, announcing its official entry into the blockchain world.
IBM, the blue giant, entered the market earlier, proposing a project called "Hyperledger" in 2015, which was mainly aimed at solving practical problems among corporate customers and providing a full set of blockchain solutions. However, this project did not attract much attention, mainly because it was aimed at B-side users and ordinary users did not have much experience with it.
Facebook's project is much more ambitious, targeting the weak spot of traditional banks and other financial institutions - cross-border and inter-bank financial circulation, and wants to build a world-class financial payment system, which may severely kill the banks. It has also attracted the direct attention of enterprises and governments.
Unlike previous digital currencies, the emergence of Libra has attracted the attention of the business and political circles. Domestic and foreign companies have expressed their concern. China, which has always been called a "desert" for digital cryptocurrency , has also shown great interest in this project, and the famous economist Lao Lang has expressed his recognition and expectations for the Libra project.
At the government level, Zhu Hexin, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, wrote on July 1, 2019 that in the process of using pre-loan alternative data to provide credit reporting services for small and micro enterprises and agriculture, rural areas and farmers, it is inevitable to involve information technologies such as big data, cloud computing, blockchain and supply chain. This once again emphasized the importance of blockchain technology.
Later, at the "Digital Finance Open Research Program Launch Ceremony and First Academic Seminar" on July 8, Wang Xin, director of the Central Bank Research Institute, directly stated that the central bank is organizing market institutions to conduct research and development of central bank digital currency with the formal approval of the State Council . This officially represents that China has also joined the global digital currency competition.
In this meeting, Dean Wang said frankly, "...with the Libra plan coming out, everyone has paid great attention to it because it is called a basket of currencies, which to some extent solves the problem of trust and widespread use because it has a large number of platforms. If it has a relatively large development prospect in the field of payment, especially cross-border payment, then as it is further used, whether it can play a greater role as a currency is a very big question."
The current financial system was established after World War II and is a world economic system dominated by the US dollar. This is also an important tool for the United States to dominate the world economy. If Libra is used properly, it may become an extension of the US dollar hegemony, allowing the US dollar to gain an overwhelming advantage in the real economy and also gain dominance in the virtual world's economic system. This is actually what China does not want to see.
It can be seen from the Sino-US trade war unilaterally initiated by the United States earlier that although China has no intention of challenging the economic hegemony of the United States, it does not mean that we will always be led by the US dollar. Therefore, China tried to develop projects such as the "Belt and Road Initiative" and the "Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank" a long time ago in order to create the possibility of economic development led by China.
Facebook Libra has publicly called for providing financial services to 1.7 billion people in poor areas, including 2.7 billion users in the Facebook ecosystem. Facebook has put forward a very clear target market, but it is also a target market that China can compete for.
On the afternoon of July 2, the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee suddenly sent a letter to Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives, asking them to immediately stop all work on the digital currency wallet project Libra, but Facebook later responded positively that it would not stop the Libra project! Since then, the Libra project has been mediating with the U.S. Congress.
Combining the attitude of the central bank and the practical problems facing Libra, if we can build our own digital currency system before Libra, we may find another way to pry the hegemony of the US dollar. Now we start with cooperation with the countries along the Belt and Road Initiative, provide digital currency services, start with simple cooperation at a relatively low level, and use digital currency to gradually internationalize the RMB, so that more countries can accept our digital currency or RMB. The contribution to the economy will be immeasurable. It will also make it possible for China to challenge the hegemony of the US dollar. (Nanjing Blockchain )
|
