The current situation of digital currency and Finance
In the morning of March 9, 2014 Beijing time, Jared Cohen, creative director of Google, said at the Sxsw conference this week that digital cryptocurrency similar to bitcoin will exist for a long time. Cohen and Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman, promoted their co-author book the new digital age at the conference
in the past few months, bitcoin prices have fluctuated significantly. At the same time, this digital currency is strongly supported by the hacker community and is closely related to some black markets. Cohen believes that bitcoin has its value, but it will bring risks if it is not regulated
mt.gox lost $400 million worth of bitcoin, which shakes the confidence of the outside world in bitcoin. Some critics even point out that "bitcoin is dead". However, Cohen's statement is a strong support for cryptocurrency technologies such as bitcoin
bitcoin can exist only because both sides of the transaction recognize its transaction value, so anyone can independently design a virtual currency. Ars technica, for example, announced this week that it would create its own cryptocurrency, arscoin
Cohen believes that the main threat to digital cryptocurrency is how to keep it safely, and the loss of mt.gox bitcoin once again highlights this problem. Recently, the US Congress has also launched a debate on digital cryptocurrency. Some members believe that the supervision of the bitcoin should be strengthened to avoid risks. Another congressman, Jared polis, believes that the US dollar has similar defects to bitcoin, so if bitcoin is banned, then the US dollar note should also be banned
digital currency has a short history in the world, but it develops rapidly. Many countries are trying to sum up experiences and lessons through official or non-governmental efforts
take Europe as an example. In 2015, the transaction volume of digital currency in relevant European countries and regions exceeded 1 billion euro. Although the total amount is not large, it is fierce
it was reported on January 2, 2016 that the Bank of England is also considering whether to issue digital currency by the central bank, and the research work is still in the initial stage. Andy Haldane, chief economist of the Bank of England, said that switching to digital currency would be "a great technological leap forward"
DNB, Norway's largest bank, has already cancelled the cash counter service. The bank called on the government to stop using paper money completely. According to the data, only 6% of Norwegians still use cash every day, most of them the elderly. The social cost of cash payment is twice that of electronic money payment. In one day's life, the payment of bus, shopping, payment, refueling, and even parking is completed by swiping the card. Only when the children's school holds a charity sale can the banknotes be used
compared with paper money, digital currency has obvious advantages, which can not only save the cost of issuance and circulation, but also improve the efficiency of transaction or investment, and enhance the convenience and transparency of economic transaction activities. The issue of digital currency by the central bank also ensures the continuity of financial policy and the integrity of monetary policy, and also ensures the security of monetary transactions
although the issuing method of digital currency is still under study, paper currency has been regarded as "the currency of the previous generation" by some professionals, and it is the general trend to be replaced by new technologies and procts. Due to China's large population and volume, the timetable for issuing digital currency is still uncertain. It is predicted that digital currency and cash will be in parallel and graally replaced for quite a long time. When the era of digital currency really comes, people will carry less and less cash, travel more and more safe, poverty alleviation more and more accurate, corruption more and more difficult to escape, and thieves more and more difficult
Digital currency is an unregulated and digital currency, which is usually issued and managed by developers and accepted and used by members of a specific virtual community. The European Banking authority defines virtual currency as a digital representation of value, which is not issued by the central bank or authorities, nor linked with legal currency. However, because it is accepted by the public, it can be used as a means of payment, or it can be transferred, stored or traded in electronic form
in recent years, the excessive issuance of banknotes has led to the aggravation of inflation, the frequent security crisis of third-party payment, and the graal maturity of blockchain technology, so decentralized digital currencies such as bitcoin, Ethereum and reborn have emerged. Digital currency has the advantages of low transaction cost, fast transaction speed, high anonymity and fixed amount of money
At the same time, the use scenarios of digital currency become more and more abundant, which makes the user acceptance grow. At present, the use of digital currency has covered all kinds of scenes, such as shopping consumption, wage payment, transportation, travel, takeout settlement and tuition payment. The expanding landing scene has also brought a wider range of consumers. In general, although the number of users of digital currency still accounts for a small proportion of the total population, the number of users is growing. At present, the utilization rate of digital currency has exceeded 10% in 10 countries around the world In June 2019, Facebook launched Libra virtual cryptocurrency, which has caused worldwide influence. The emergence of Libra may form a global super sovereign currency, thus affecting the traditional transaction settlement currency. For China, the emergence of Libra, on the one hand, will have an impact on China's traditional currency and threaten the sovereign status of China's currency; On the other hand, because RMB is not included in Libra's basket of currencies, it will rece the reserve demand of RMB by central banks, thus hindering the internationalization of RMB. In response to this threat, CCTV timely launched the central bank digital currency. In September 2019, according to China Daily, the central bank's digital currency closed-loop test has begun, and the central bank's digital currency is about to come outcoincidentally, in addition to China, central banks around the world have also announced that they will launch a centralized digital currency based on national credit. In 2015, Ecuador took the lead in launching the national version of digital currency, which can not only rece the issuance cost and increase the convenience, but also enable people in remote areas who cannot have banking resources to obtain financial services through the digital platform. At present, Canada, Brazil, Norway, the United Kingdom and other countries are studying the central bank legal digital currency, while the Bahamas, Sweden, Russia and other countries are discussing the possibility of digital currency issuance. Generally speaking, the developing countries which have received a great impact on digital currency have supported legal digital currency for financial inclusion, breaking through sanctions and other reasons
for the above data and analysis, please refer to the in depth analysis report on business model innovation and investment opportunities of China's blockchain instry published by foresight Instry Research Institute . Meanwhile, foresight Instry Research Institute also provides instrial big data, instrial planning, instrial declaration, instrial park planning, instrial investment promotion and other solutions
one. Leverage. At present, in order to earn huge profits, many investment banks use 20-30 times leverage operation. Assuming that a bank a's own assets are 3 billion, 30 times leverage is 90 billion. That is to say, bank a borrows 90 billion yuan for investment with 3 billion yuan of assets as collateral. If the investment profit is 5%, then bank a will get 4.5 billion yuan of profit. Compared with its own assets, this is 150% windfall profit. On the other hand, if the investment loses 5%, then bank a will lose all its assets and still owe $1.5 billion
two. CDs contract. Due to the high risk of leverage operation, according to the normal rules, banks do not operate such risky operations. So someone came up with a way to take leverage investment as "insurance". This kind of insurance is called CDs. For example, bank a finds institution B to avoid leverage risk. Institution B could be another bank, it could be an insurance company, and so on. A said to B, how about you do default insurance for my loan? I will pay you 50 million insurance premium every year for 10 consecutive years, with a total of 500 million. If my investment does not default, then you will take the insurance premium in vain. If you default, you will compensate for me. A I think that if I don't default, I can earn 4.5 billion yuan, of which 500 million yuan will be used for insurance, and I can make a net profit of 4 billion yuan. If there is a breach of contract, there will be insurance to compensate. So for a, it's a business that makes no loss. B is a smart person, did not immediately agree to a's invitation, but went back to do a statistical analysis, found that less than 1% of the default. If you do business with 100 companies, you can get 50 billion yuan of insurance money in total. If one of them defaults, the maximum amount of compensation is no more than 5 billion yuan. Even if two companies default, you can still earn 40 billion yuan. A. B both sides thought the deal was good for them, so they made a deal immediately and everyone was happy
three. CDS market. After B has done the insurance business, C is jealous. C went to B and said, how about you sell me these 100 CDs? Each contract will give you 200 million yuan, a total of 20 billion yuan. B thinks that it will take 10 years for me to get my 40 billion yuan. Now there will be 20 billion yuan as soon as I change hands, and there is no risk. Why not do it? Therefore, B and C will close the deal immediately. In this way, CDs, like stocks, flows to the financial market and can be traded. In fact, after C got these CDs, it didn't want to wait 10 years to collect another 20 billion yuan. Instead, it listed them for sale with a price of 22 billion yuan; D saw this proct, calculated it, 40 billion minus 22 billion, there is 18 billion to make, this is the "original stock", not expensive, bought it immediately. As soon as they changed hands, C made 2 billion. Since then, these CDs have been copied repeatedly in the market, and now the market value of CDs has been copied to 62 trillion US dollars
four. Subprime. The above a, B, C, D, e, f... Are making a lot of money, so where does the money come from? Basically, the money comes from the profits of a and its like-a investors. Most of their profits come from American subprime loans. People say the subprime crisis is e to lending money to the poor. I don't think so. The author thinks that the subprime mortgage is mainly given to ordinary American real estate investors. These people's economic strength was only enough to buy their own house, but seeing the rapid rise of house prices, they started the idea of real estate speculation. They mortgage their houses to buy investment houses. This kind of loan interest should be above 8% - 9%, which is difficult to deal with with with their own income, but they can continue to mortgage their house to the bank, borrow money to pay the interest, and set up a white wolf empty handed. At this time, a is very happy that his investment is making money for him; B is also very happy that the market default rate is very low and the insurance business can continue to develop; C, D, e, F and so on make money
five. The subprime crisis. When the house price rises to a certain extent, it will not go up, and no one will take over the offer. At this time, real estate speculators are as anxious as ants on a hot pot. The house couldn't be sold, and the high interest kept paying. Finally, on a day when there was no way out, the house was left to the bank. At this point, a default occurs. At this time, a feels a little sorry that he can't make a lot of money, but he can't lose there. Anyway, B has insurance. B doesn't worry. Anyway, the insurance has been sold to C. So where is the CDs insurance now? It's in G's hands. G has just spent 30 billion to buy 100 CDs from F. before it has time to change hands, it suddenly received news that these CDs were downgraded, and 20 of them defaulted, far exceeding the original estimated default rate of 1% to 2%. Each default will cost $5 billion in insurance, with a total cost of $100 billion. Plus the $30 billion CDs acquisition fee, G's loss totaled $130 billion. Although G is one of the top 10 institutions in the United States, it can not afford such a huge loss. So G is on the verge of bankruptcy
six. Financial crisis. If G goes bankrupt, the insurance that a spent 500 million dollars to buy will be ruined. What's worse, because a uses leverage principle to invest, according to the previous analysis, a can't pay off all its assets. So a is in immediate danger of bankruptcy. In addition to a, there are A2, A3,..., A20, all of which should be prepared for bankruptcy. Therefore, G, a, A2,..., A20 came to the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury together and lobbied with tears. G must not go bankrupt. Once it goes bankrupt, everyone will be ruined. As soon as the Treasury secretary was soft hearted, he nationalized g. since then, the insurance of a,..., A20 totaled $100 billion, all of which were paid by American taxpayers
seven. The dollar crisis. The market price of the 100 CDs mentioned above is 30 billion. The total value of CDS market is 62 trillion. Assuming that 10% of them default, there will be 6 trillion default CDs. That's 200 times more than 30 billion. If the US government buys 30 billion CDs, it will lose 100 billion. So for the rest of the defaulting CDs, the US government will have to pay $20 trillion. If you don't pay, you have to watch A20, A21, A22 and so on close down one by one. No matter what measures are taken, a big depreciation of the US dollar is inevitable
the assumptions and figures used in the above calculation may differ from the actual situation, but the severity of the U.S. financial crisis cannot be underestimated.