Editor's Note: This article comes fromMars Mars Blockchain (ID: Mars_Blockchain), Author: Yi Boling, published by Odaily with authorization.
Editor's Note: This article comes from
Mars Mars Blockchain (ID: Mars_Blockchain)
Mars Mars Blockchain (ID: Mars_Blockchain)
, Author: Yi Boling, published by Odaily with authorization.
Marx once said such a sentence in "Das Kapital", "It is a thrilling jump from commodity to currency. If it falls, it is not only the commodity that breaks, but the owner of the commodity."
Ten years ago, the programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz used 10,000 bitcoins to buy two pizzas worth $25, completed this "thrilling jump", and opened up the first order in the history of bitcoin payment. trade.
Bitcoin, together with the concept of digital currency, has approached people's cognition and broke into the world of daily life.
In 2014, the People's Bank of China established a digital currency research group to conduct detailed research on the cryptography behind cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology, currency issuance, and circulation environments.
In 2019, Facebook, a social media tycoon with 2.7 billion users, released the Libra white paper, intending to establish a simple, borderless currency and a financial infrastructure that serves billions of people. frenzy. Following the news of Wal-Mart’s currency issuance, Mu Changchun, deputy director of the Payment and Settlement Department of the People’s Bank of China, said at the Yichun Forum of China’s 40 Financial People that the central bank’s legal digital currency DC/EP is “ready to come out.”
The three currency payment forces represent the convergence of the national government, multinational corporate giants, and private parties, and are setting off a "competition storm" in the worldwide digital currency payment market.
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Bitcoin's strengths and weaknesses
Bitcoin was born in the context of the US financial crisis in 2008. Satoshi Nakamoto's initial setting was very idealistic, aiming to set up a worldwide currency. The beginning of the white paper shows "Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system". According to a specific algorithm, the transaction behavior is recorded through the distributed database of many P2P nodes. .
The quantity is constant and extremely scarce, so Bitcoin will never be inflated, avoiding the problems of some centralized currencies. However, in the history of currency development, there are enough examples to prove that fixed monetary aggregates not only fail to stimulate the economy, but even bring about economic disasters. Although inflation is abominable, deflation is also a headache.
For example, gold can be described as a world currency with human consensus. Before the industrial revolution, human productivity was very limited. According to historical records, in the nearly 2,000 years before the industrial revolution, the growth rate of the earth's per capita GDP was less than 50%. In less than 200 years after the Industrial Revolution, GDP per capita increased tenfold.
In 1929 and 1971, the United States abolished the gold standard twice, and it was not for no reason that it opposed the gold that the people naturally believed in.
Although repeated quantitative easing can stimulate economic growth, a sovereign currency management system backed by national credit requires the central bank’s strong independence and ability to self-manage currency in order to maintain its inflation target in line with the development of the global economy. A little carelessness can also lead to excessive inflation, even similar to the 2008 economic crisis. In real life, not all sovereign countries have these powerful capabilities, such as Venezuela, Zimbabwe and other countries.
However, Bitcoin is not a payment currency in the actual sense. Similar to the price trend of gold, the price of Bitcoin has fluctuated greatly, and it is more used for value storage and hedging. The title of "digital gold" did not come out of thin air.
Second, the blockchain, the underlying technology behind Bitcoin, is not suitable for payments. Due to its distributed ledger technology, the blockchain has poor scalability: for each transaction, all nodes in the system must perform full calculation and storage, which is very inefficient. Compared with the current Alipay and WeChat payment speed habits, Bitcoin is very inconvenient for daily payment.
Nevertheless, in recent years, the latest Lightning Network technology has solved most of the delay and scalability problems of Bitcoin payment, Bitcoin payment still occupies one market, and the number of institutions supporting Bitcoin payment is gradually increasing.
More and more merchants and even countries accept bitcoin payments, including well-known multinational companies such as Microsoft, Dell, Starbucks, AT&T, and Burger King. According to the Coinmap bitcoin payment map, as of now, there are 15,433 businesses around the world that accept bitcoin payments. From the distribution of the heat map, most of these businesses are located in more developed countries and regions such as North America, South America, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea. .
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Libra: a digital currency closer to a payment tool than Bitcoin
In May 2018, Facebook established a blockchain department. Zuckerberg claimed to enter the blockchain field and use blockchain technology to protect the privacy and security of its criticized users. A year later, Libra was born and the white paper was officially released.
According to the white paper, Libra's mission is to build a simple, borderless currency and financial infrastructure that serves billions of people. Libra will not be controlled by Facebook and will be operated by the independent Libra Association, which currently has 28 founding members including Facebook, Mastercard, PayPal, and PayU.
These 28 founding members include Internet companies, bank card clearing organizations, payment institutions, telecommunications companies, investment institutions, non-profit organizations, etc. It is a leading company in various fields, as well as multilateral organizations, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations Combination of etc.
Unlike digital currencies such as Bitcoin, Libra claims to be backed by real asset reserves, anchored to a basket of fiat currencies and short-term government bonds, to establish a simple world-class currency without borders, and to provide basic financial facilities for billions of people.
However, most of Libra’s founding node members are from the United States. Therefore, there is a view that Facebook’s move was tacitly approved by the Federal Reserve to create a digital currency “dollar hegemony.”
At the same time, according to the analysis of the white paper, Libra's low-level technology does not completely adopt the blockchain, but a hybrid architecture. Specifically, Libra adopts a layered approach. The bottom layer adopts a centralized architecture. Only the final settlement layer uses blockchain technology, and there will not be many distributed nodes in the final settlement layer. Affected the speed of settlement.
Therefore, Mu Changchun once said that Libra's technical architecture should be more fully expressed as "a layered hybrid technical route combining a centralized distributed processing architecture and blockchain technology."
This technical route is actually similar to the solution idea of the Lightning Network, but Libra anchors a basket of currencies or bonds. With its characteristics as a stable currency, it is naturally suitable for cross-border payments, and it is still stronger than Bitcoin as a payment currency. The advantages.
For example, the European Union began to issue a joint statement on Libra in late August this year, and Germany and France have unequivocally said "no".
This year, on September 12, at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) meeting in Paris, France, French Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said of Libra that they would not allow Libra due to their "very concerned" crypto projects. Libra is developing in Europe. Germany followed suit, joining the anti-Libra camp in France, and the two countries issued a joint statement saying they would prevent any development of Libra in the European region.
Long Baitao, the author of the Libra monograph and a Ph.D. from Tsinghua University, once analyzed that Germany and France unequivocally said "No" to Libra because they were worried that Libra would lead to the collapse of the euro, the legal currency of the European Union.
What's more interesting is that in July this year, U.S. President Donald Trump also expressed his distaste for the project, while U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin insisted that the Libra project would pose a serious threat to national security and that digital assets could be used for money laundering and terrorist financing attack.
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Central bank digital currency: fight back before Libra arrives
The research and development of the central bank’s digital currency began in 2014. After five years of preparation, on August 10 this year, at the China Finance Forty Forum, Mu Changchun, deputy director of the central bank’s payment and settlement department, said that since last year, the Digital Currency Research Institute’s The relevant personnel have already "996", and the central bank's digital currency is about to come out.
Mu Changchun also disclosed the design concept and technical architecture of the central bank's digital currency:
1. The central bank should maintain technical neutrality and not presuppose technical routes
During Double 11 in 2018, the transaction peak of Netlink reached 92,771 transactions per second. For comparison, Bitcoin is 7 transactions per second, and Ethereum is 10 to 20 transactions per second. According to the white paper just released by Libra, 1000 transactions per second Pen. Because the legal digital currency focuses on M0, that is, the replacement of cash in people's hands, if the blockchain architecture is fully adopted, there is no way to achieve the high concurrency performance required by retail.
2. Adopt a two-tier operating system, first exchange the digital currency to the banking institution
The single-tier operating system is where the People's Bank of China directly issues digital currency to the public. The People's Bank of China first exchanges the digital currency to banks or other operating institutions, and then these institutions exchange it to the public. This is a two-tier operating system.
Mu Changchun once explained that China is a complex economy and is not suitable for a single-tier operating system. The first is to bring financial disintermediation back to the era of planned economy, back to before 1984; but the two-tier operating system helps to resolve risks and avoid excessive concentration of risks.
3. Commercial institutions pay full and 100% reserves to the central bank
Commercial institutions need to pay the central bank in full and 100% of their reserves. The central bank's digital currency is still a liability of the central bank, guaranteed by the central bank's credit, and has unlimited legal repayment.
5. Under the two-tier operation system, the centralized management model is still adhered to to ensure the central position of the central bank in the delivery process. Central bank digital currency is still a liability of the central bank to the public.
Libra is also mortgaged with so-called 100% reserve assets, but it is not limited to M0, and there may be excessive currency issuance.
7. Must have high scalability, high concurrent performance, and can load smart contracts
Mu Changchun especially emphasized that the centralized management method is different from electronic payment tools such as Alipay and WeChat. The central bank's digital currency does not require a preset account, and it can be circulated as easily as cash. It only needs mobile devices to have electricity and does not require a network, which is conducive to the circulation and internationalization of RMB.
At the same time, through big data analysis, controllable anonymity can be achieved. While ensuring the anonymity of both parties to the transaction, the three antis (anti-money laundering, anti-terrorist financing, and anti-tax evasion) are guaranteed, and a balance is struck between the two.
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The government, multinational corporate giants, and private currencies stand on each other's feet
The digital currency of the People's Bank of China only represents the sovereign currency management of the Chinese regime, which has strong national and regional characteristics. In the future, it is foreseeable that more and more countries will issue their own digital currencies, and the central bank's digital currency is a substitute for national legal tender.
As for Libra, although it generally faces regulatory problems in various countries, relying on Facebook to anchor a basket of currencies, it is very transnational in itself and has a strong user traffic base. The negative attitude of regulation may not completely prohibit the issuance and distribution of Libra. possibility of development. Cross-border payment has become Libra's biggest selling point.
