How does the “national team” central bank apply blockchain?

Banks are present in every trend of social change. Although they are not necessarily the first to be reformed, they will always be absent.

At a time when we thought banks were indifferent to blockchain, they had come a long way in blockchain technology.

According to the “2017 Global Blockchain Enterprise Patent Ranking (Top 100)” published by iPrDaily and the Incopat Innovation Index Research Center, the number of applications from the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China, the People's Bank of China Printing Science and Technology Research Institute, and China Banknote Credit Card Industry Development Co., Ltd. in 2017 was 33, 22, and 13, respectively. The People's Bank of China surpassed Alibaba to become the 2017 global blockchain patent champion with a total of 68.

In fact, the central bank's research and exploration of blockchain began three years ago.

In 2015, the China Banknote Blockchain Technology Research Institute (officially established in 2016) team began to focus on blockchain technology. This is the first team in the central bank system to study digital currency and blockchain technology;

In 2016, the China Banknote Blockchain Technology Research Institute team undertook and organized the development of a digital bill platform based on blockchain technology, which has now been successfully launched on the Stock Exchange;

In January 2016, a blockchain-based digital currency was tested, and efforts began to fight for blockchain securities rules;

On January 29, 2017, the central bank officially established the Digital Currency Research Institute to study the development of blockchain and digital currency to ensure that the potential of blockchain technology can be used to the greatest extent in China's financial industry;

In February 2017, the blockchain-based digital note trading platform promoted by the People's Bank of China was successfully tested, and fiat digital currencies issued by the central bank have also been tested on this platform;

On March 26, 2018, the People's Bank of China announced the successful establishment of the Blockchain Registration Open Platform (BROP), which aims to establish multiple economic sectors, reduce the burden on officials, and meet the certification requirements of government agencies;

On September 4, 2018, the Shenzhen branch of the People's Bank of China began pilot work on the “Bay Area Trade Finance Blockchain Platform”. The platform is dedicated to building an open financial trade ecosystem based in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, facing the whole country, and radiating the world. Trade and financing activities can be carried out on the platform in various scenarios, including accounts receivable trade finance, etc. At the same time, the platform also provides a trade finance supervision system for regulators to monitor the dynamics of various financial activities on the platform in real time.

Overall, the blockchain applications of the People's Bank of China currently cover fields such as digital notes, digital currency, trade finance, etc., and most of them are still in trial operation, which is quite cautious.

Of course, there are still very few blockchain projects that can actually generate social benefits; this is true for the entire industry. On the one hand, there are still many misunderstandings about people's perception of blockchain. On the other hand, blockchain technology itself is indeed still in the exploration stage, and blockchain is still facing problems such as poor performance, unclear effects, and insufficient supervision.

In September 2017, the central bank and 7 other ministries and commissions jointly issued the “Notice on Preventing Token Issuance and Financing Risks” to stop ICOs, and there were many voices calling down blockchain on the internet. What needs to be clear, however, is that ICOs are not the same as blockchain; they are just people taking advantage of the chaos to steal.

What needs to be done now is to return to rationality, research and use blockchain to solve practical problems and serve the real economy. This is the correct attitude in the face of a new technology. The central bank has given a good example.

Source: Out-of-chain reference