Yesterday, on Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2019, the popular business news source Forbes reported that the former Head of the China Construction Bank, Paul Schulte, in conjunction with someone who hasn’t yet been named but who is currently working for the People’s Republic of China’s central bank digital currency efforts, told its reporters that the first seven entities to receive the initial digital currency made by the Chinese state government will be Union Pay, the Agricultural Bank of China, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Alibaba, and Tencent.
It’s important to note that while these seven entities have been confirmed as future recipients of the first digital currency production from the People’s Republic of China, there is one other entity that is slated to receive the digital currency before any other people, government agencies, or businesses. The name of the aforementioned digital currency will be known as DC/EP, which is short for Digital Currency/Electronic Payments.
The aforementioned unnamed source claimed that the earliest date on which DC/EP could be shipped out to the seven entities mentioned above is Nov. 11, 2019, though it could take as long as next year in order for it to be placed in the corporate and governmental hands of the recipients that are listed by name in the first paragraph. These organizations will be tasked with distributing Digital Currency/Electronic Payments to the citizens of China who are interested in holding, using, or trading the digital currency, as well as those who want to do business using the renminbi, which is the infrequently-used name of China’s fiat currency, which is measured in terms of yuan, the most common name of the official state fiat currency of the People’s Republic of China.
Eventually, the unnamed source told Forbes, the digital coins will be distributed to interested buyers based in the United States through the help of third-party banks, though this won’t happen for some time. It’s likely, according to the crypto and digital currency industry leading news publication Cointelegraph, that China’s digital currency could come out before Facebook’s Libra hits the market. An administrator at the Renmin University of China, Yang Dong, noted that China was motivated by Libra to make its own state digital coin and turn to non-government organizations to distribute the digital currency instead of using the traditional means of government agencies, such as state treasuries.
