After the buildup of excitement surrounding the much-hyped launch of a new digital currency, the People's Bank of China just doused cold water on it and said it is not happening just yet.
PBOC denied rumors that it was about to launch the new crypto, saying it needs more time to go about current regulations and issues, among other things, state media agency Xinhua News said.
It was only recently that the Chinese federal bank announced it was all set to roll out its sovereign virtual asset which led to conjectures in local media that the crypto could be in circulation as early as November this year.
As a matter of fact, financial analysts expected that November 11 was going to be the possible date for the crypto's introduction, which also coincides with the country's Single's Day, one of the busiest electronic shopping events of the year.
However, People's Bank of China governor Yi Gang, put closure to further talks in a statement he made during a press gathering in Beijing, saying the digital currency program has yet to be carefully planned and without any specific "timetable."
Research and more development would continue to allow time for more work on key areas like "testing, assessments and risk prevention," Yi said.
China's venture into the multi-billion crypto market makes it the first country in the world to begin testing and developing a government-sponsored stable coin. Major progress has been attained as early as 2016, when PBOC established an exclusive research facility to engage in technology and how stablecoins would help the economy.
Since then, finance officials have worked on a multitude of trade patents encompassing applications and new systems of such technology, yet the central bank has remained quite mum on certain details and parameters of the research.
It was only when Facebook announced in the spring that it was creating its own cryptocurrency that saw development activity for China's own digital asset speed up and added more hype to its launch nonetheless.
China is putting a lot of effort to make this crypto project materialize. The central bank has bared that one of these days, the virtual currency will be given the same amount of attention as its yuan currency, with the PBOC seeing electronic transactions becoming the trend of the future.
