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So far, several countries have expressed tangible interest in the idea of developing central bank-backed digital currencies (CBDCs). The European Union has also talked about the potential release of a digital euro, although no actual plans were publicly announced. 

Recently, the European Central Bank (ECB) published a 50-page report highlighting the main challenges that the institution would have to deal with, in order to make the digital euro a reality. 

According to a statement made by the President of the ECB, Christine Lagarde, “Europeans are increasingly turning to digital in the ways they spend, save and invest (...) Our role is to secure trust in money. This means making sure the euro is fit for the digital age. We should be prepared to issue a digital euro, should the need arise.”

At this point in time, most of the world’s countries have issued some form of regulatory framework for digital currencies. Research on the matter has shown that there’s an overall lack of standardization in terms of cryptocurrency and blockchain regulation, thereby giving way to uncertainty, especially for crypto-related business ventures operating globally.

Recent reports indicate that a standardization of cryptocurrency regulations for EU member countries is on the agenda of the European Commission. A copy of a legislative draft was recently leaked on the internet, thus showcasing the institution’s vision concerning crypto regulation.

The main point worth keeping in mind is that crypto assets will be regulated in a similar manner to most other financial instruments. Most of these rules are centred towards service providers and token issuers, rather than users. The regulatory draft kicks off with a definition of crypto-based assets and highlights the main regulations that EU companies should respect. Emphasis is placed on stablecoins, which have been actively gaining popularity over the last couple of years.

Despite the worldwide economic slowdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, it seems like the cryptocurrency market is entering a new phase of economic stimulation, price increases, and overall market interest.

This statement is backed by a statistical report released by Apptoppia, according to which a record-breaking number of cryptocurrency wallet app downloads were logged during July 2020. With this in mind, 3.5 million wallets were downloaded to mobile devices during this month, which is 81% more when compared to July 2019. Furthermore, throughout this year, the number of active digital currency users increased by approximately 110%.

For the sake of comparison, app wallet downloads averaged about 2 million during the last year.

It has often been said that mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies can be attained through an integration with the payment systems that people are already familiar with. Recent reports indicate that Visa understands this concept, given the fact that the company has announced that they are working towards integrating digital currencies with their payment network.

In a recent blogpost, Visa has stated that alternative means of payment, such as fiat-backed stablecoins, have the potential of revolutionizing the world’s payment systems. According to the company, “We’re reshaping how money moves across the globe, and that means pursuing a broad array of technologies and partnerships. In that regard, digital currencies offer an exciting avenue for us to continue doing what we do best: expanding our network-of-networks to support new forms of commerce”.

Over the last couple of months, countries throughout the world have been exploring the concept of central bank-backed digital currencies, a digital alternative to fiat that would completely digitalize everyday spending and largescale inter-state/inter-bank/inter-corporation monetary transfers. It only makes sense that nation-states agree with this concept, given the centralized nature of CBDCs.

Several countries such as China are already beta-testing their CBDCs, whereas others are actively-developing these financial instruments. For instance, recent developments suggest that the United States is currently working on the conceptualization and creation of a Digital Dollar. In a recent Banking Committee Senate hearing, Senator Tom Cotton mentioned that: “The U.S. dollar has to keep earning that place in the global payments system. It has to be better than bitcoin… it has to be better than a digital yuan”. During the senate hearing, debates were also held on a series of other crypto-related topics, including but not limited the regulatory oversight upon stablecoins, the advantages of blockchain-based financial markets, and the dawn of a new financial architecture.

While cryptocurrency prices have remained quite steady within the last couple of months, the market is evolving at a relatively rapid pace. In fact, numerous analysts believe that the rising popularity of cryptocurrency derivatives, alongside the variety of compelling crypto and blockchain-based projects are bound to further encourage innovation, drive mass-adoption, and lead to long-term price hikes.

An introduction to crypto derivatives

This specific market sector is still fairly new, yet it has attracted billions of dollars’ worth of investment capital, alongside considerable attention from large-scale investors. Despite this, the derivatives market is still a mystery to most casual users, due to its complexity.

The events pertaining to the COVID-19 crisis that have unfolded during the last couple of months have led to increasing levels of economic uncertainty throughout the world. Additionally, the US is currently dealing with intense street protests in a number of cities, thus further affecting financial well-being. 

These events have all worked together towards bringing a new bull run to the cryptocurrency market. Data now shows that bitcoin has once again risen above the $10,000 threshold. Thus, a price climb of over $500 has occurred in less than 30 minutes – this definitely has us reminiscing Bitcoin’s past bull runs.

This value increase has affected most of the top-tier cryptocurrencies, similarly to past events. Thus, coins like Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Ripple, Litecoin, EOS, and others are also in the green.

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Over the last couple of months, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has been actively working on the development of the country’s central bank-backed digital currency (CBDC) – the Digital Yuan. Based on the large number of media reports on the matter, we can only assume that once released, China’s CBDC will be an instant success amongst the Chinese population, thus paving the way for future national digital currency experiments. 

This article is meant to provide an overview of the most recent developments regarding the digital yuan.