The click of the Dragon. After weeks, months, of announcements, China officially opens the dance on the digital yuan, the currency issued by the central bank, legal tender and destined, according to many observers to seriously question the monetary sovereignty of the dollar. It is all too well known that Beijing works belly to the ground on a state digital currency, just as the regions are known. First, the digital yuan is the tool with which the central government will significantly increase the grip on financial transactions. And, second, the digital currency represents the lever with which to try to give the final push to Bitcoin & Co, which has been in the Chinese crosshairs for some time.
And so, on the day when the sensational announcement arrives from Hong Kong that it will be possible to pay for a Banksy work in cryptocurrenciesauctioned for 4.1 million dollars, China officially places on the market the first pilot tranche of digital yuan. Such as
distributing 40 million yuan ($ 6.2 million) digitally to Beijing citizens in a lottery. In other words, residents of the Chinese capital will now be able to use two banking apps to request to win one of the 200,000 virtual packages containing the coin, which they can freely spend on the purchase of goods and services.
In fact, to date this is the first introduction of virtual yuan into the Chinese market, an operation which, although local, formally paves the way for the launch of the digital state currency on a national scale. Indeed, according to the governor of the PBOC, the central bank, Li Bo, the same central institute expands the scope of its pilot projects and may even allow foreign visitors to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics to use it.
Looking more closely at the yuan operation, one cannot fail to see yet another blow on Bitcoin. A virtual state currency can knock out any other payment instrument other than paper or metal. And it is no coincidence that the circle around Bitcoin is starting to tighten. Just yesterday, as reported by Reuters, a number of cryptocurrency-related accounts on the Chinese Twitter-like Weibo platform were blocked.
All while the outlawing of the entire mining activity is approaching, i.e. the extraction of the cryptocurrency and then placing it on the market. An operation that requires servers that are harmful to the environment, given the high energy requirements to operate, to the point of having pushed Elon Musk himself , Tesla’s owner, to a sudden reverse, after investing in cryptocurrencies and opening their use for the purchase of electric vehicles.
“China would be ready to crack down on bitcoin mining and trading and make sure that individual risks are not passed on to the entire society.” These are the words, contained in a note from the Committee for Financial Stability and Development of the Council of State, with which the Chinese government formally sides against Bitcoin. Translated, Bitcoin and illegal upstream mining process. According to what was anticipated by the South China Morning Post, there are three reasons that led Beijing to take such a hard line against Bitcoin: first of all there is the risk linked to financial stability, but also the increasingly important role that Bitcoins are playing in the field. money laundering and drug trafficking. The third reason concerns, words of leading exponents of the Chinese government,
