It’s been five years in the making but the People’s Bank of China says that it is finally ready to release their own CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency).

Mr. Mu Changchun who heads the PBoC’s Payments and Settlement Division explained to the China 40 Finance Group over the weekend the complexities of the first cryptocurrency created by a major central bank.

It may come as no surprise that the unique two-tier system has the PBoC in the top tier and Chinese commercial banks as the second tier. So, not exactly an open-source network like bitcoin. Changchun says that this particular strategy will work best with the needs of the Chinese economy.

Personally, I’m still struggling to understand the advantage of this over the current system. Something tells me that this is a completely different animal from what we know as cryptocurrencies.