Editor's Note: This article comes fromStar Media STARMEDIA (ID: Star_Media1), Author: Xuesui, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.
Editor's Note: This article comes from
Star Media STARMEDIA (ID: Star_Media1)
, Author: Xuesui, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.
According to recent reports from foreign media, since Facebook held a hearing on the release of Libra last year and was rejected, in order to meet the existing financial regulatory requirements, it is now making relevant adjustments to its mechanism.
On the other hand, compared with Facebook’s preparations for Libra with great fanfare, its competitor Tencent seems to be much “cooler”, but in fact, when it comes to issuing “coins”, Tencent’s strength is no less than Facebook.
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Q currency triggers a wave of supervision
As early as 2007, Tencent Q Coin was defined as a "virtual currency" by some people because of its popularity, which triggered the voice of the regulatory authorities.
The story begins with the history of Tencent’s development. Before 2002, although Tencent used QQ to change the social communication method of Chinese people, QQ at that time was like a chicken rib. There was only money invested, but no business revenue point was found. No source of revenue is fatal to any company.
Fate is always such a coincidence. Tencent founder Ma Huateng accidentally discovered that a game company called "Ninetowns" can earn up to 2 million yuan in a single month by issuing game currency within the game.
That being the case, can QQ also issue its own game virtual currency? The founding team, who did what they said they would do, soon designed their own virtual currency - Q coins, which is convenient for users to purchase QQ shows.
Unexpectedly, once it was launched, the popularity of the market exceeded expectations. Half a year after the launch of QQ Show, the number of users who purchased it reached more than 5 million.
After that, the Tencent team successively launched diamond systems such as Qzone, QQ Games, and Red Diamond Nobility, forming an independent, closed-loop QQ world, and Q coins have become the only pass in this world.
At that time, there were more than a dozen virtual currencies such as Baidu Coin, U Coin, Paradise Coin, etc., but because Tencent took the lead in firing the first shot of social networking at that time, with convenient, instant, and free user experience, QQ user data was exponential. Growth, and the number of users of Q coin also increased sharply, ranking first among other virtual currencies.
All of a sudden, Q coin trading venues, Q coin recharging platforms, forum points exchange intermediaries, Taobao recharging platforms, etc. appeared on the market one after another. I searched the information at that time and found that in the 2006 Hunan Satellite TV Super Girl Finals, fans bought Q coins to support the star votes. The transaction volume of Q coins on Taobao reached hundreds of thousands on the same day. There were even media reports at the time that the fastest appreciation was not RMB. It is a virtual currency called Q coins.
Later, the popularity of Q coins spread to offline for a while, and they were used for physical exchange. Buyers then resold Q coins at a lower price than the official price to gamers, thus obtaining RMB.
But in reality, in this way, the ultimate victim is still the user, because most of the sources of these Q coins come from hackers stealing accounts,
Looking back now, I am afraid that there are not many people born in the 80s and 90s who have not had their numbers stolen, and traces of those days can still be found today.
Theft, black market transactions, virtual items, impact on the RMB financial system... for a while, related remarks about Q coins flooded the Internet, and rumors spread everywhere.
"Q currency does not have the basic functions of currency - value scale and means of circulation, and can only be circulated in one direction. And it only serves the internal system of Tencent products. Once it is separated from it, it is worthless. It will never become a virtual currency, let alone impact RMB". This is Tencent's response to the outside world's remarks.
Later, the discussion of public opinion aroused the attention of government departments. In 2007, 14 Chinese ministries and commissions and the central bank jointly launched a special crackdown on virtual currency transactions, calling on relevant companies to stop transactions to prevent criminals from using them for money laundering. At the same time, it pointed out that it will "strengthen the regulation and management of virtual currencies in online games, and prevent virtual currencies from impacting the real economic and financial order."
After that, Q coin gradually returned to its original state. Perhaps it has never been far away, and what is far away is only people's hearts and desires.
Afterwards, Ma Huateng, the founder of Tencent, claimed that the technology had been accumulated for many years, but Tencent never thought of issuing coins, and everything was premised on supervision.
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And Libra doesn't seem to think so
As a world-class social giant, Facebook holds massive user data of 2.7 billion. Like many companies, using existing resources to expand business fronts is an effective and fast way to accumulate wealth.
The issuance of the borderless virtual currency Libra, in Facebook's view, is the greatest attempt at business strategy.
Non-government organizations issue currency in circulation, which was a fantasy in the past. Because once the issuance and circulation of currency is controlled by private individuals, the privacy of users and the safety of personal property cannot be guaranteed; at worst, it will disrupt the existing financial system, trigger an international economic crisis and challenge the stability of the ruling party regime.
At the Libra hearing on October 23, Facebook founder Zuckerberg was attacked by 47 officials of the US House of Representatives.
Zuckerberg said that since the Bretton Woods system established in 1944, the US dollar-centered international monetary system, with the growing economic strength of countries in the world represented by China, and the lack of growth space for the US financial industry and infrastructure, the US dollar has become a major player in the world. The power of discourse in the economic structure is weakening day by day. But if we want to continue to stabilize the dominance of the US dollar, we must carry out bold innovations.
As a payment tool that anchors multiple currencies, Libra will be directly anchored with the US dollar, euro, Japanese yen, British pound and Singapore dollar, creating a borderless currency.
At that time, the U.S. dollar will be used as the main reserve currency in the tool. Not only will it not have an impact on the existing U.S. dollar financial system, but it will increase the influence of the U.S. economy in the global market to counter the DECP issued by the People’s Bank of China.
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But is it true what Zuckerberg said?
To understand the intention behind Zuckerberg, you need to understand two concepts-super-sovereign currency.
The super-sovereign currency is completely separated from sovereignty and is not issued by any sovereign country. It is used for stable currency exchange on a global scale.
As early as the 1960s, in response to the economic crisis caused by the US dollar, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) planned to launch the first super-sovereign currency SDR to replace the US dollar as the international central currency.
However, due to the extremely strict requirements for the issuance, circulation, and supervision of SDR currency, especially if it is successfully issued, it will threaten the hegemony of the US dollar. It was strongly opposed by the United States and its followers, and it was only circulated in a small range.
Compared with SDR, although the underlying technology of Libra is more mature, the amount of funds is larger. However, the financial concept behind it is exactly the same as SDR. It is not restricted by sovereignty, national borders, and legal provisions of various countries, and it circulates freely without fortresses on a global scale. By eliminating currency exchange and foreign exchange reserves, trade between countries will be more efficient and frequent. Once successful, it will be a great innovation in the history of international trade development.
