Am wondering whether Mq meant that, as Canadian oil is now negative, Canadian gold would also go negative. If so, that could imply positive savings can be valued at negative, and (this is where I get confused) either negative or positive money would gush into our accounts, or something :0)
Meantime, a piece of news that might impact silver, given that Team USA might have to consider official crypto w/ full-trace ledger on every transaction, and if so, the electorates might like such discipline, and go for alt-transaction currency that is not any of the non-official cryptos (officials might shut down the exchanges), etc etc
This may matter as much ...
It would seem that the comrades thought through the issues, and reckon it is time for experimentation, just as they did enough times in the past, and if so, the underlying reasons for the experiment may matter, quite a bit.
At the very least it puts Team USA on notice that the Team may have to go cashless as well, w/ trace on every transaction. Team America electorates may not appreciate such discipline?
Buy silver.
wsj.com
China Rolls Out Pilot Test of Digital Currency
Jonathan Cheng
5-6 minutes
BEIJING—China’s central bank has introduced a homegrown digital currency across four cities as part of a pilot program, marking a milestone on the path toward the first electronic payment system by a major central bank.
Internal tests of the digital currency are being conducted in four large cities around China—Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu and Xiong’an, a satellite city of Beijing—to improve the currency’s functionality, the digital currency research institute under the People’s Bank of China confirmed Monday, in response to a request for comment.
Chinese domestic and state-run media outlets reported on the trials over the weekend. The trials followed years of research by the central bank dating back to 2014.
The new currency, which doesn’t have an official name but is known by its internal shorthand “DC/EP,” or “digital currency/electronic payment,” will share some features with cryptocurrencies including bitcoin and Facebook Inc.’s Libra, PBOC officials have said. While it won’t boast the anonymity that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies tout, China’s central bankers have vowed to protect users’ privacy.
The intention, China’s central bankers have said, is to replace some of China’s monetary base, or cash in circulation. It won’t replace other parts of the country’s money supply, such as bank deposits and balances held by privately-run payment platforms, Yi Gang, the governor of China’s central bank, said last year.
The central bank’s research institute said Monday that the pilot is being launched on a trial basis, in part to prepare for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. The research institute added that the digital currency won’t be issued nationwide or in large quantities in the near term and said that the test run wouldn’t trigger inflation.
In Xiangcheng, a district in the eastern city of Suzhou, the government will start paying civil servants half of their transport subsidy in the digital currency next month as part of the city’s test run, according to a government worker with direct knowledge of the matter.
Government workers were told to begin installing an app on their smartphones this month into which the digital currency would be transferred, the worker said.
Civil servants were told that the new currency could be transferred into their existing bank accounts, or used directly for transactions at some designated merchants, the person said.
China is ahead of many other countries in preparing the launch of an official digital currency. In recent years, the use of traditional paper bills and cash has declined sharply, and smartphone payments have become so ubiquitous that many Chinese people, particularly younger urban dwellers, no longer carry their wallets or cash for shopping. Instead, they use Tencent Holdings Ltd. ’s WeChat Pay and Alipay, operated by Ant Financial Services Group, an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
China’s central bank has said that shifting to a government-run digital payment system will help combat money laundering, gambling and terror financing. It has also hailed digital currencies as a way to improve the efficiency of transactions in its financial system.
China’s four biggest state-run banks have joined the central bank in developing the digital currency. Screenshots of the digital currency’s wallet app, made by one of the banks, Agricultural Bank of China Ltd., circulated widely online last week.
The screenshots purported to show a variety of functions, including allowing savers to track transactions of the new currency, manage their accounts and link the wallet to their existing bank accounts.
Mu Changchun, a central-bank official overseeing the research of China’s digital currency, said in August last year that the currency is “ready to launch,” but Mr. Yi, the PBOC governor, said later in the year that there wasn’t yet a timetable for the launch.
—Grace Zhu contributed to this article.
Write to Jonathan Cheng at jonathan.cheng@wsj.com |
