China’s digital yuan evokes dystopian future
Loading player...
Fifteen centuries after China invented banknotes, the nature of money is set to fundamentally change. Back then, in the Tang dynasty (around 618AD) paper money was little more than an IOU and became known as “flying cash” because, unlike metal money, it had a tendency to blow away.
Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin have foreshadowed a potential digital future for money, though they exist outside the traditional global financial system and aren’t legal tender like cash issued by governments.
China’s version of a digital currency is controlled by its central bank, which will issue the new electronic money. It is expected to give China’s government vast new tools to monitor both its economy and its people. By design, the digital yuan will negate one of bitcoin’s major draws: anonymity for the user.
Beijing is also positioning the digital yuan for international use and designing it to be untethered to the global financial system, where the U.S. dollar has been king since World War II. China is embracing digitization in many forms, including money, in a bid to gain more centralized control while getting a head start on technologies of the future that it regards as up for grabs.
A cyber yuan stands to give Beijing power to track spending in real-time, plus money that isn’t linked to the dollar-dominated global financial system
Michael Avery spoke to Bronwyn Williams, who is a Futurist, Economist, and Business Trends Analyst at Flux Trends, on whether this is as dystopian as it sounds.
Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin have foreshadowed a potential digital future for money, though they exist outside the traditional global financial system and aren’t legal tender like cash issued by governments.
China’s version of a digital currency is controlled by its central bank, which will issue the new electronic money. It is expected to give China’s government vast new tools to monitor both its economy and its people. By design, the digital yuan will negate one of bitcoin’s major draws: anonymity for the user.
Beijing is also positioning the digital yuan for international use and designing it to be untethered to the global financial system, where the U.S. dollar has been king since World War II. China is embracing digitization in many forms, including money, in a bid to gain more centralized control while getting a head start on technologies of the future that it regards as up for grabs.
A cyber yuan stands to give Beijing power to track spending in real-time, plus money that isn’t linked to the dollar-dominated global financial system
Michael Avery spoke to Bronwyn Williams, who is a Futurist, Economist, and Business Trends Analyst at Flux Trends, on whether this is as dystopian as it sounds.