Editor's note: This article was first published on the WeChat public account Zinc Link (ID: xinlianjie-), author: Zhao Xuejiao; editor: Wang Qiao, pay attention to the public account, and explore the value of industrial blockchain with us. If you need to repost the article, please apply for a whitelist on WeChat.
Editor's note: This article was first published on the WeChat public account Zinc Link (ID: xinlianjie-), author: Zhao Xuejiao; editor: Wang Qiao, pay attention to the public account, and explore the value of industrial blockchain with us. If you need to repost the article, please apply for a whitelist on WeChat.
The contest between Libra and DCEP (central bank digital currency) has begun.
On the one hand, the Libra team is doing its best to speed up the development progress. On the other hand, the Central Bank of China's digital currency (DCEP) is also undergoing closed-loop testing and has begun to recruit troops.
On October 3, Libra released its first project roadmap, the main network will be launched, and 100 partners are expected to run full nodes.
A week later (October 11), the Central Bank's Digital Currency Research Institute released the 2020 talent recruitment information and began to recruit technology R&D and financial technology talents.
Recently, Zinclink interviewed the founder of MOAC public chain and Jingtong Technology, "Looking at the sky from the bottom of the well", and talked about the future development and competition of Libra and DCEP in the world.
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1. DCEP uses blockchain to compete with Libra
Libra and DCEP are different in attributes and technical routes.
In terms of attributes, the difference between Libra and DCEP is the presence or absence of central bank authorization. In DCEP, DC refers to digital currency with legal sovereignty, and EP refers to electronic payment, which is a digital currency authorized by the central bank.
Libra, on the other hand, is not authorized by the central bank, and is mortgaged by a basket of legal currency in cash, similar to Hong Kong's Hong Kong dollar issuance method, where Hong Kong dollars are 100% U.S. dollars and the legal status of the jurisdiction.
Although there is no Fed mandate, the US dollar accounts for 50% of Libra's basket. If Libra runs smoothly, the global anchor currency will not only be the US dollar, but the US dollar + 1/2 Libra.
Therefore, it can be said that Libra is the white glove of the US dollar, maintaining the hegemony of the US dollar against the background of the lowering of the US dollar's world status.On the technical route, Libra's only innovation is the use of a new programming language MOVE in smart contracts, which was developed by Facebook itself.But Libra does not solve the blockchain layering problem
, the underlying speed is about 1000TPS.DCEP adopts a hybrid architecture and does not preset technical routes. In essence, whether DCEP uses blockchain technology depends on the technical route of commercial banks. But from the perspective of technological development trend,。
Judging from the recruitment requirements of the Central Bank’s Digital Currency Research Institute, the central bank should be aware of this problem and is stepping up the recruitment of blockchain technology development or application talents.
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2. DCEP should meet the convenience of anonymity and user privacy
Assuming that you buy a bowl of soy milk with DCEP, it will also be recorded, and big data tools will analyze your payment behavior. Before you finish your soy milk, your phone will be bombarded by various soy milk advertisements.At the expense of privacy for convenience, many people may choose to give up using it. This is also a problem with the current version of DCEP:。
Adopted the method of real-name account
It strongly couples the user's payment behavior and includes the owner's personal information, which violates the anonymity convenience of petty cash payment and user privacy protection, and does not abide by the transaction principle of local verification. Local verification means that transactions do not need to rely on third-party participation to reduce transaction costs.
Therefore, the DC of the central bank should not be undertaken by this strongly coupled payment system.
In response to this problem, the solution of Jingtong blockchain is to use the technical characteristics of the blockchain to perform local verification without relying on the intervention of a third party. The micropayment is anonymous, and the system does not store personal privacy to protect the privacy of users. right.
In addition, whether RMB internationalization can be realized through DCEP, on the one hand, depends on the design of EP, whether it can meet the convenience, ease of use, low cost and supervision required by cross-border payment. On the other hand, the necessary regulatory requirements for international finance must also be met.
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3. Libra’s super-sovereignty concept may not work
Strictly speaking, Libra is not the first concept of a super-sovereign currency. The euro is already a super-sovereign currency. In the Eurozone, individual sovereign states still exist, while their defense policy is handed over to NATO, foreign policy to the European Union, and monetary policy to the European Central Bank.
What is important is that monetary policy is not a single closed-loop system, but also requires the cooperation of fiscal policy.
The problem with the euro zone is that there is a unified monetary policy, but no unified fiscal policy to support it. Although the European Union has proposed some major fiscal frameworks, such as red lines for deficits and GDP ratios, in practice, Germany and France, the two cornerstones, took the lead in fouling. After all, fiscal policies, especially taxation and welfare policies, involve the interests of domestic voters.
Strictly speaking, Libra's super-sovereign currency system is a super-large capital club. If Libra masters the monetary policies of many countries, how to interact with the fiscal policies of these countries that have no political connection and no relationship with public opinion is a problem that needs to be solved in future development and practice.
Another problem is that the concept of super-sovereign currency proposed by Libra may not work.
First of all, Libra anchors a basket of currencies, which is equivalent to the SDR (Special Drawing Rights) of the IMF (International Monetary Fund), but this design is a credit construction and cannot correspond to retail business payments.
Secondly, it is unknown whether the concept of stable currency can be realized. Libra corresponds to a basket of currencies, and there is no answer yet on how to allocate the proportion of these currencies.
Generally speaking, sovereign currencies determine the allocation ratio of a basket of currencies based on trade relations and current account transactions. This ratio is classified and if leaked and improperly operated, it will lead to a large-scale attack by arbitrage funds.
If Libra has a large volume, this stable ratio setting will have some interaction in the foreign exchange market. In the foreign exchange market between countries, in addition to market factors, there are also factors of trade wars.
Central banks in various countries have a large number of white gloves conducting various manipulations. It is a difficult technical operation to maintain the stability of the Libra currency. It is not the logic of mortgaging and anchoring bank assets and maintaining the stability of a basket of currencies.
From the perspective of implementation difficulty, Libra may not be mature in the design of the operating mechanism of the stable currency.
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4. Whoever is faster and understands users better will win
If the renminbi wants to be internationalized, it has to face global competition with Libra.
Libra is known as inclusive finance, and the first step will definitely occupy third world countries, such as South America, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa.
For the internationalization of RMB, countries and regions along the Belt and Road are the first choice, and a "RMB zone" will be formed.
Therefore, the first place where Libra and DCEP compete should be related countries along the Belt and Road, especially Southeast Asian countries.
From the field of view, the two sides will definitely first engage in cross-border payment, cross-border remittance and cross-border remittance. In the future, it is very likely that there will be competition in areas such as financing and wealth management.
In this competition, whoever moves faster, whose products are more convenient and meet the needs of local users, will win.
"Currently, the international monetary and financial system is facing serious challenges, and the dominance of the US dollar and its spillover effects are all problems." In August, Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, pointed out in a speech at the annual meeting of the Jackson Hole central bank that in the long run, the US dollar Hegemony cannot last forever, but any unipolar system is no longer suitable for a multipolar world.In the future, the United States, China, and the European Union will all launch their own central bank digital currency systems, and finally form a three-point world.
At that time, as long as the central bank allows enterprises and individuals to directly open accounts and pay interest on deposits, the level of commercial banks will disappear and shrink into commercial loan service companies and private equity management companies.
