China’s central bank said Thursday it will continue expanding the digital yuan pilot program, for which the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics will be an important test. Currently, the digital yuan service is mainly offered by invitation, and the number of customers on the whitelist has reached 10 million, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China Fan Yifei said at a news conference. In the same conference, Fan attacked digital currencies, in particular Bitcoin, saying that it’s a speculative tools used for money laundering for illegal economic activities. He also said that crypto undermine financial security and social stability. The central bank has taken steps against private digital currencies and is watching and studying them, Fan added.
There is currently ambiguity about cryptocurrency operations in China. Local cryptocurrency exchanges and financial instruments related to digital currencies, such as ico, have been illegal since 2017. All of these ordinances have so far been issued by administrative entities and have not significantly discouraged the use of cryptocurrencies. Beijing is now thinking of introducing a ban on trading cryptocurrencies in the penal code as well. One of the reasons that could explain this opposition to cryptocurrencies, in part, is that Chinese authorities have become increasingly wary of the energy impact of bitcoin mining, as it threatens the nation’s efforts to position China as a leader in the world on the climate.
The repression of Crypto in China has also been intensified through the media: with the spread of news linking the use of cryptocurrencies as scams and the state broadcaster Cctv which explained that cryptocurrency is a poorly regulated asset, often used in the dark web, money laundering, arms smuggling and drug trafficking.
All this, however, while the Central Bank of China is accelerating the tests of its digital currency.
