The meeting of finance and technology, widely known as fintech, is changing the landscape of investment management. As the saying goes, it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future events. But it’s manifestly worth the effort because catching big trends is how fortunes are made and catastrophic losses are avoided.
Blockchain-related topics are extremely hot nowadays and cryptocurrencies are one of those. So, what is a cryptocurrency? From the word itself you can see that it has something to do with cryptography and currency. For its part, cryptography is the process of converting ordinary plain text into unintelligible text and vice-versa. Modern cryptography deals with confidentiality: information cannot be understood by anyone, integrity: information cannot be altered, and authentication: sender and receiver can confirm each other.
Putting all the pieces together, cryptocurrency is a medium of exchange value (just like ordinary money) that exists in the digital world and relies on encryption, which makes transactions secure. A cryptocurrency is an alternative form of payment to cash, credit cards, and cheques. The technology behind it allows you to send it directly to others without going through a third party like a bank. In short, cryptocurrencies are like virtual accounting systems.
As you can find, there are many exciting use cases for this. You can send money back to your family without incurring large international fees if you’re working in a different country. Merchants no longer have to worry about payment fraud because people can only spend what they have. Summing up, Cryptocurrency is a radically new way of paying that makes all the transactions secure and helps to get rid of intermediaries represented by banks, which also contributes to a significant reduction in the commission fee.
The cryptocurrencies can either be based on blockchain technology or can be centrally issued, circulated within a community or geographic location, or tied to fiat currency. Blockchain is a revolutionary ledger technology, with a wide array of potential applications from smart contracts to healthcare systems, but it did not catch the attention of speculators and the media until Bitcoin surged from $0.009 to more than $11,000 per coin. There are more than 869 cryptocurrencies, but without fundamentals, they are little more than “trust machines” and, as such, are nearly unanalyzable. They generate no cash flow, making discounted valuation approaches inapplicable, but this criticism applies to gold as well.
Although it is cheaper to invest in the early stages, during a new cryptocurrency’s initial coin offering, doing so may overlook the network effect that favors older altcoins (alternative cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin).
Cryptocurrencies are going to play a major role in the coming years and China has decided to be part of that future, in a big way. China’s official digital currency is nearly ready. As much as China frowns on cryptocurrency, it’s happy to introduce its cryptocurrency. There is a great deal of confusion and misunderstood facts surrounding the legal status of cryptocurrency in China. Various headlines like China Bans Bitcoin, China Bans Crypto Exchanges, China Bans Bitcoin Mining, and many more make most people unclear on where China stands on cryptocurrency and whether that has any real impact on how its citizens behave.
The People’s Bank of China has revealed that its digital currency, “can now be said to be ready” after five years of research work. Don’t expect it to mimic crypto, however. According to payments Deputy Chief Mu Changchun, it’ll use a more complex algorithm and structure. This project of coming up with own cryptocurrency of China was started by the former governor of China’s central bank, Zhou Xiaochuan, who retired in March. He decided to come up with the digital currency which will protect China from having to adopt a technology standard, like Bitcoin, designed and controlled by others.
Facebook Inc.’s push to create cryptocurrency Libra has caused concerns among global central banks, including the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), which said the digital asset must be put under central bank’s supervision to prevent potential foreign exchange risks and protect the authority of monetary policy. Sun Tianqi, an official from China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said, “Libra must be seen as a foreign currency and be put under China’s framework of forex management”. Dave Chapman, executive director at BC Technology Group Ltd also said on similar lines that, “It is without a doubt that with the announcement of Libra, governments, regulators and central banks around the world have had to speed up their plans and approach to digital assets. They have to consider the possibility that non-government issued currencies could dramatically disrupt finance and payments.”
How the cryptocurrency issued by China will be different from other cryptocurrencies, might be one of the questions coming to your mind. To begin with, in launching the new cryptocurrency, referred to as DC/EP for Digital Currency/Electronic Payment, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has stolen a march on both Facebook and other central bankers who have been discussing the possibility of a cryptocurrency and how it’s the implication. What sets China’s DC/EP apart from libra and Mark Carney’s(Bank of England’s Governor) “synthetic hegemonic currency” (SHC), according to Paul Schulte(The founder and editor of Schulte Research, a company does research on banks, financial technology, bank algorithms, and credit algorithms), is that while libra is little more than early-stage computer code and the SHC doesn’t appear to have gone much further than Carney’s mind, the Chinese cryptocurrency is ready to launch. “China is barreling forward on reforms and rolling out the cryptocurrency,” says Schulte, who now runs a research firm. PBOC will be the first central bank to come up with its cryptocurrency. Unlike the decentralized blockchain-based offerings, this one could give Beijing more control over its entire financial system. It would increase the PBOC’s ability to root out risks and crackdown on money laundering. It could also give the government an unprecedented window into individuals’ private lives.
Deputy Chief Mu Changchun described the central bank’s “two-tiered” system, wherein the bank would create the cryptocurrency and a small group of trusted commercial businesses would “pay the central bank 100% in full” to be allowed to distribute it. This dual delivery system is suitable for national conditions of China. It can not only use existing resources to mobilize the enthusiasm of commercial banks but also smoothly improve the acceptance of the digital currency across China. If China’s leaders agree on with this idea of a legal cryptocurrency for the whole country, its introduction will likely be gradual. Early adopters would be barred from using it on investment products, a person familiar with the central bank’s plans says, which would make the impact on monetary policy negligible.
“China’s strategic plan is to integrate more closely with the rest of the world. Cryptocurrency is just one of the means to have a more internationalized renminbi. It’s all strategic. It’s all long term”, said Charles Liu, chairman of HAO International, a private equity firm investing over $700 million in Chinese growth companies. Finally, the Chinese government said that the cryptocurrency could launch as soon as November 11, China’s busiest shopping day, known as Singles Day.
finvert.home.blog 