China’s central bank has apparently opened an investigation into Yao Qian, the first director of CBDC development, for possible legal infractions.
According to reports, Chinese officials are looking into Yao Qian, a local advocate for blockchain technology, for possible legal infractions.
Yao is reportedly the subject of an enquiry by the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee over “severe violations” of the law and discipline, according to a report published in the Shanghai Securities News on April 26.
Yao is a prominent member of the Chinese blockchain community and is currently the director of the Science and Technology Supervision Bureau of the China Securities Regulatory Commission.
He is known as China’s “Crypto Dad” and was the first director of the People’s Bank of China’s (PBoC) central bank digital currency (CBDC) research department from 2017 to 2018.
Yao continued to be involved in conversations and research related to digital currencies even after leaving the PBoC’s active CBDC development.
The former head of CBDC research for the PBoC made a prediction in May 2021 that state-controlled digital currencies would become more “smart” and would eventually function on blockchain networks like Ethereum.
One of the first countries in the world to finish real-world CBDC tests was China, which launched the digital yuan, as a pilot program in late 2019.
In 2021, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) initiated cross-border CBDC experiments in partnership with the central banks of Hong Kong, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates, shortly after initiating domestic digital yuan testing.
As China’s President Xi Jinping urged for aggressive blockchain adoption in October 2019, the PBoC’s introduction of the digital yuan was in keeping with China’s “blockchain, not crypto” strategy.
The Chinese government, on the other hand, has adopted a hostile posture towards cryptocurrencies and plans to outlaw all of them by 2021.
Hong Kong, China’s special administrative territory, has been actively pursuing cryptocurrency development over the past few years, whereas mainland China has opposed the concept.
The Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong approved the first set of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on April 24. If approved, Hong Kong is expected to outperform the US in the introduction of spot Ether ETFs, with a trading debut anticipated for April 30.
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