By
Bhushan Akolkar
April 25th, 2024
An official at the central bank of China believes that blockchain will help to ensure continuous growth in the tech sector.
Calls for the increased and improved use of blockchain technology are gradually making the rounds because while there are still a lot of places where the technology has been adopted quite considerably, there are still many others that have a lot of work to do. The use of blockchain technology is probably seen more in the financial sector and authorities and governments are gaining more interest.
Recently, a call came from an official at the central bank of China, directed at commercial banking institutions in the country and enjoining them to look into ways they can improve digital finance in general, via blockchain technology.
According to a Reuters report, the head of the technology department of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), Li Wei spoke at a forum on Monday in China’s biggest city of Shanghai.
While the Chinese government has not been the most supportive regarding cryptocurrencies, the PBoC is just about ready to release its own digital currency. The central bank announced a few months ago that it had begun the process of creating a digital yuan and eventually sped up the process until some time ago when an official confirmed that it was ready to launch.
Supposedly, China decided to speed up the development of their cryptocurrency when Facebook announced and began to make progress with its Libra. Even though the U.S. Congress has been quite unsupportive of Facebook’s efforts, the social media giant along with its team of other Libra governing institutions known as the Libra Association, are still forging ahead and making progress, ahead of the planned release sometime in 2020.
At the moment, there’s also a chance that the U.S. government just might create a digital dollar. There are now repeated calls from members of Congress and other notable citizens, calling for a digital dollar because the growth of cryptocurrencies is strong enough to displace the dollar’s current dominance. It is believed by a lot of people that if another country or entity – as in the case of the digital yuan or the Libra – decides to create a cryptocurrency widely accessible by many, it could very easily knock the dollar of the pedestal it currently resides. As part of a recent testimony, Zuckerberg warned that innovation is the only the U.S. can maintain its position as a leader.
“We can’t sit here and assume that because America is today the leader that it will always get to be the leader if we don’t innovate,” said he.
A few days ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping also urged for increased use of blockchain technology in the country. According to Jinping, blockchain will drive the creation of other related technologies. He said:
“We must take blockchain as an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technologies, clarify the main directions, increase investment, focus on a number of key technologies, and accelerate the development of blockchain and industrial innovation.”
Cryptocurrencies are mostly disallowed in the country and at different times, authorities have clamped down on cryptocurrency activities including events and seminars, as well as mining.