Editor's Note: This article comes fromInterchain Pulse (ID: HiveEcon), Author: Yuan Shang, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.
Editor's Note: This article comes from
Interchain Pulse (ID: HiveEcon)
Interchain Pulse (ID: HiveEcon)
Although the white paper of the "Digital Dollar Project" does not mention China and the digital renminbi, its helm has already regarded the digital renminbi as an imaginary enemy.
Christopher Giancarlo (J. Christopher Giancarlo), the former chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), has been serving as the director of a non-profit organization "Digital Dollar Foundation" since his resignation on April 13. The foundation released a white paper on the Digital Dollar Project in May.
The foundation did not clarify its source of funding, but there are indications that it comes from the support of the US state. Giancarlo is a Republican. He was nominated by Trump when he served as the chairman of the CFTC in 2017, and he took office through the Senate. This position itself is a "public office."
Giancarlo has publicly stated that the digital dollar is to maintain the leading position of the US dollar in the digital world. If the digital renminbi rises and the US dollar is not digitized, its status will inevitably be challenged. And he put an ideological label on digital currency, dividing it into "free and unfree".
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The Imaginary Enemy of the Digital Dollar
The opportunity for Giancarlo to become the "father of the digital dollar" comes from an opinion article published by Giancarlo and Goffin in the "Wall Street Journal" on October 15 last year: "We send people to the moon, and we can send dollars to to cyberspace.” This article explores how to create a digital dollar through consultations and methods, including stakeholder meetings, round table discussions and public forums, and describes in detail how a digital dollar can safeguard the core interests of the government and the existing Support from related projects of the US Federal Reserve Board (FED). It concludes with a set of key guiding principles for a digital dollar.
These principles will be tested against a wide range of stakeholder needs and use case requirements to ensure the value of the digital dollar. The principles require that the digital dollar comply with the core legal, security, privacy, economic and cultural requirements of the United States, and promote the construction and development of the global financial system. consumer needs.
This article obviously attracted the attention of relevant US agencies, and then Giancarlo began to prepare for the digital dollar project and established the digital dollar foundation.
On January 16 this year, the Digital Dollar Foundation and Accenture officially launched the project. Because Accenture has digital currency cooperation with the central banks of many countries, such as the e-Sweden launched by the Riksbank in February this year.
March 26, 2020 The Digital Dollar Project has announced the members of its first advisory group of 22 experts who will help guide the framework of practical steps for establishing a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). The list includes businessmen, economists, former regulators, tech luminaries and educators who represent advocates in areas such as banking, capital markets, international standards, anti-money laundering, monetary policy, national security, privacy and property rights.
After Giancarlo stepped down as CFTC chairman in April, he devoted himself to the construction of the digital dollar. Like most of the American elite, it is a staunch defender of the global hegemony of the US dollar. In April of this year, he said in an interview with Forbes: "In the 35 years of my career, the dollar has been the world's main reserve currency, and I firmly believe that the role of the dollar in the global economy is not only good for the United States, but also good for the global economy. .The world has become one global market precisely because of the dollar’s global preeminence over the past few decades.”
Giancarlo attributed past global development results to the leadership of the dollar: "(During the period of dollar leadership), more people have been lifted out of poverty and entered the middle class than ever before in human history. What comes is improved living standards, improved nutrition and health care, and improved literacy and education.”
It is true that the U.S. dollar, as a common currency, has indeed promoted globalization. But he put the cart before the horse and attributed the achievements of globalization to the hegemony of the US dollar, obviously ignoring that production and consumption are the needs of globalization itself. Even without the US dollar, a multi-currency system can achieve the results of globalization.
He said: "As China invests in 5G and the Belt and Road Initiative, even global allied countries are beginning to use the critical digital infrastructure built by China. China's infrastructure will use the digital yuan as part of its integration, bypassing the world's other traditional banking systems."
Giancarlo believes that Western financial and regulatory systems have been slow to respond and adapt to this new wave of asset digitization. “We have to focus on our financial market infrastructure so that it is ready for the digital wave. History tells us that we may lose it very quickly. After World War II, the dollar was ahead of the pound, which had previously been dominant. If you don’t Get ready for the future and you won't be able to adapt to it."
Overall, Giancarlo, who is leading the construction of the digital dollar, wants to maintain the hegemony of the dollar in the digital world, and the imaginary enemy is the digital renminbi.
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(Digital Dollar Project White Paper Cover)
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Is the digital dollar difficult to achieve in the short term?
Although strategically, the digital dollar regards the renminbi as a competitor, but in terms of tactical implementation, the digital dollar lags far behind the digital renminbi.
In terms of time, the digital renminbi was launched 6 years ahead of the digital dollar. Today, the digital renminbi has entered the pilot stage, and the digital dollar has just proposed a basic plan.
Technically, according to the "Digital Dollar Project" white paper, the digital dollar still hopes to be realized through distributed ledger technology, which means that if the digital dollar is to be put into practice, there are many technical challenges that need to be solved. For example, in terms of performance, the digital RMB can already achieve a transaction performance of 300,000 TPS, while the current fastest public chain technology only has a few thousand TPS.
Because of the addition of Accenture, the digital dollar is likely to use the Corda ledger technology developed by R3 like the e-krona. According to a February report by the Riksbank, the country’s digital currency project is being led by Accenture and built on blockchain consortium R3’s Corda.
Accenture and R3 have cooperated a lot. At the 2019 CordaCon conference in October last year, Accenture and R3 cooperated to establish a blockchain real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system.
The Financial Clearing Center of the United States has conducted performance tests on various major blockchains. Corda and Digtial Assets can be expanded to 6000TPS in 5-6 hours. But it is still far from the digital renminbi.
In addition to transaction performance, the digital renminbi can realize dual offline payments. However, no matter it is classic blockchain ledger technology such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, or blockless distributed ledger technology such as Corda, DAG, etc., it is impossible to achieve dual offline payment. In fact, the above-mentioned distributed ledger technology for single offline payment It can't be realized either.
This means that when there is no network or the network environment is not good, the effect of the digital dollar is greatly reduced. Although a lot of words have been used to discuss its "inclusiveness" in the white paper of the "Digital Dollar Project", but it is empty talk without a network.
