Will the traditional US dollar be threatened? It's reported that China's four major state-owned banks are testing wallet apps, as the launch of the digital RMB is imminent.

According to Chinese media reports, the Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) is conducting internal testing of the central bank's digital currency DCEP wallet. This marks the final countdown phase for DCEP to officially go live since China revealed its plans to launch the official version of the virtual currency in 2019.

The pilot program for China's Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP) has begun. According to screenshots from the test version of the app, the DCEP wallet will support functions such as digital asset exchange, management, transaction record inquiry, wallet affiliation, as well as basic mobile payment functions including scan-to-pay, transfer, receipt, mobile chip payment, and more.

Previously, Mu Changchun, the former director of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China (PBOC), had mentioned that the PBOC has been researching digital currency since 2014. However, it seems that the process of introducing the central bank's digital currency has accelerated in response to the potential launch of Facebook's Libra stablecoin project.

Based on registration information within the wallet, the initial pilot areas include Suzhou, Xiong'an, Chengdu, and Shenzhen. Participating financial institutions include the four major state-owned commercial banks (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank) and the three major telecom operators (China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom), confirming previous speculation that DCEP would first be piloted at these four major banks.

On the 3rd of this month, the People's Bank of China held a national currency, gold, and silver security work video conference for 2020, stating that they will "enhance the top-level design of DCEP and resolutely promote the research and development of legal digital currency." Shortly after, news of DCEP entering the trial phase emerged, indicating the significant importance China places on digitalizing its currency.

In addition, it was reported yesterday that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China announced the establishment of the Blockchain Committee, the "National Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology Standardization Technical Committee", consisting of 15 organizations covering political, financial, industrial, academic, and research backgrounds, which will set national standards for blockchain and distributed ledger technology.

Since October last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping publicly stated that "blockchain should be regarded as an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technologies, and as a key direction for future national development." Subsequently, China quickly embraced blockchain technology as mainstream, with authorities and local governments increasingly engaging in the field of blockchain.