Read Libra in a text: the difference between Q coins, Alipay and Bitcoin

On June 18th, Facebook released its blockchain project Libra. A world-class Internet giant not only adopted blockchain technology, but also issued currency, the impact is self-evident.

Libra's mission is to create a simple, borderless currency and financial infrastructure that serves billions of people.

Foreign media have reported on the front page of the Internet version, and the Internet of the currency has also paid attention. Domestic Internet giant, evaluation of Facebook's currency:

• Millions of people in South Korea use “honeycomb accounts”, and the loss of funds is the biggest hidden danger
• The birth of Libra: The short-term benefits have been exhausted, what should I do with the currency payment project?
• Bitcoin is back to 10,000 US dollars, and some people earn 500% in half a year. Some people wait and see when to enter.

If virtual currency has great value, then the QQ currency that Tencent launched 10 years ago is not counted?

Figure: Take the purchase of coffee as an example

At first glance, I really feel that Libra is nothing special, but this time it is 3.0 Q coins:

As can be seen from the above table, there are mainly differences in issuers, distribution models, value anchors, exchanges, and liquidation.

Q coin era

It is a kind of virtual goods, and Tencent is responsible for providing service exchange and liquidation. The supervision of this is also perfect:

Ten years ago, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Commerce jointly issued the "Notice on Strengthening the Management of Virtual Money in Online Games" (Wenshifa [2009] No. 20), and formulated the rules for the regulation of online games virtual currency; but in 2016, The Ministry of Culture issued the "Notice on Regulating the Post-event Supervision of Online Game Operations" (Wenshifa [2016] No. 32), for the first time clearly stipulates that online game virtual currency and virtual props cannot be exchanged for legal tender.

Alipay era

It is a bit more difficult, because the balance of the balance of Alipay and the 1:1 exchange of RMB, need to access the bank, responsible for the difficulty to achieve (only OTC market buy and sell Alipay balance) exchange, but the liquidation right to master Alipay. But with the supervision:

In 2010, the central bank issued the “Measures for the Administration of Payment Services for Non-Financial Institutions” (People's Bank of China Order [2010] No. 2), and in 2015 issued the “Administrative Measures for Network Payment Services of Non-Bank Payment Institutions” (People's Bank of China Announcement [2015] No. 43)

Bitcoin era

There is no issuer, just the blockchain-based POW protocol, and there is no need for users to buy, just mine (answer math questions), what exactly?

Bitcoin's blockchain system generates a new block every 10 minutes (the computational difficulty of the algorithm is constantly adjusted to ensure a 10 minute interval, which is now extremely difficult, resulting in the cost of digging a bitcoin over $3,000); For every 210,000 blocks, the reward for mining is halved, and the initial reward is 50 bitcoins.

According to this calculation, in about 2137, the Bitcoin blockchain produced 6.72 million blocks, the reward has been reduced to the minimum unit of the bitcoin system, 1 satoshi; and then, there is no system reward for generating new blocks. That is to say, stop generating (issuing) new bitcoin (in this case, the reward for each new block is the transaction fee for all transactions, only the transaction volume is getting larger and larger, and the transaction fee is more).

After calculation, the bitcoin block system generated about 21 million bitcoins. In response to Bitcoin, the central bank introduced the regulatory policy as early as 2013. The five ministries and commissions including the People's Bank of China jointly issued the Notice on the Prevention of Bitcoin Risk (Yinfa [2013] No. 289, hereinafter referred to as “Notice”):

Bitcoin should be a specific virtual commodity that does not have the legal status equivalent to currency and cannot and should not be used as currency in the market.

However, Bitcoin transactions act as a way of buying and selling goods on the Internet, and ordinary people have the freedom to participate at their own risk.

Libra era

There are three levels of innovation: one is that the issuer is not Facebook; the other is that the convertible is not a US dollar, but a basket of currencies; the third is that the redemption party is not a bank, not a Facebook, but a Libra member unit; Blockchain clearing.

From the user's point of view, whether it is Q coins or Alipay, after recharging, its currency is entered into the bank (this requires Tencent or Alipay to sign a contract with the bank and open an account);

But Libra users can not only replenish the US dollar (including cash and government securities provided by a stable and reputable central bank), the recharged assets become reserve assets, and will be held by custody institutions with investment-grade credit ratings distributed around the world. Have.

Another point is that there is no need for the participation of the banking system.

Post-dollar era

The demise of the banking system belongs to the central bank. Let's first look at what the dollar era looks like. The simplest thing is to look at the Fed's balance sheet, as shown below:

As you can see from the above picture, its assets suddenly become "fat". The reason for getting fat is to buy a lot of US Treasury bonds on the one hand, and to buy a lot of financial "garbage" through QE.

Do not believe, you can look at the 2008 financial crisis, the main assets of the Fed are long-term, short-term national debt, gold, etc., as shown below:

It can be seen here that in the past, the US dollar was issued on the basis of the establishment of national debt, and the US dollar was essentially a bond linked to US Treasury bonds.

In other words, if the US government wants to get the US dollar, it must pledge the future tax (national debt) of the American people to the private Fed, and the Fed will issue the "Fed Reserve Voucher", which is the "dollar."

By the end of December 2018, the total assets of the People's Bank of China was 37.25 trillion yuan, and the amount of its assets and its proportion are shown in the following figure:

As can be seen from the above figure, the proportion of “debt” has soared from less than 4% to nearly 30% now, while the portion of foreign exchange reserves that has been anchored has dropped from 83% to 57% today.

These "debts" are mainly high-grade bonds that commercial mothers receive from commercial banks through various open market operations such as reverse repo, MLF, SLF, etc., including refinancing and rediscounting.

Unconsciously, the printing methods of the United States and China have already been smashed.

The release of Libra Coin is different from Alipay (Alibaba is “recharged” by the user and then “balance” in the account of the user Alipay), which is based on the reserve – real-world valuable assets (what assets have the right to reserve, The Libra Association decided) At the same time, Libra does not require a banking system to operate, but ultimately captures or captures valuable assets around the world.

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