The launch of the digital currency China is working on (DCEP), could take place in the first few months of next year.Â
Jack Lee of HCM Capital, Foxconn’s private equity arm, told CNBC that the country is already supported by a well-developed third-party payment network, that includes AliPay and WeChat Pay, which could easily integrate the digital currency.Â
At first, it seemed that the digital currency was set to launch for Single Day, 11/11/2019, but this rumour was refuted by the Chinese Central Bank (PBoC) itself.Â
Now, according to this new rumour, the hypothesis would involve a postponement of a few months, with the release that could arrive in two or three months.Â
Probably the first operations will be carried out publicly in a test phase, but in case of success, it may not be long before it is made available to the different gateways that constitute the Chinese digital payments network already in use.Â
Jack Lee confirms that the Chinese government and PBoC are interested in promoting the use of the state digital currency to track payments, and thus the use of it by citizens. In fact, he defines “perfect” the use of the blockchain within a currency like the Chinese DCEP, precisely because of its ability to track every transaction.Â
Lee also talked about Bitcoin, pointing out the differences with respect to both DCEP and Libra for example.Â
In particular, as far as Bitcoin is concerned, he pointed out the absence of the need to resort to intermediaries for its use, whereas all the operations of the DCEP will probably be carried out through an intermediary (such as payment gateways), and will be registered on a ledger kept by the Central Bank itself.
In both cases, the costs of transactions can be significantly reduced, while ensuring that they remain safe, transparent and immutable.Â