“While the government of China and Shanghai have accepted the use case for the offshore RMB stablecoin, the pilot program is not endorsed or associated with the government,” Banbury added.
Conflux will contribute its technology to establish an offshore renminbi (RMB) stablecoin pegged to China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital yuan, according to Chris Banbury, head of worldwide operations at Conflux, who told Cointelegraph on Sept. 21.
“This will be priced in digital yuan exclusively, with no formal integration,” Banbury explained, adding that the initiative will investigate how the token trades against other currencies.
After the Chinese government granted the Lin-gang Special Area permission to explore free trade with an offshore RMB stablecoin in July, the new stablecoin initiative will ease international trade in Shanghai’s Lin-gang Special Area.
“While the government of China and Shanghai have accepted the use case for the offshore RMB stablecoin, the pilot program is not endorsed or associated with the government,” Banbury added.
The new offshore RMB stablecoin, unlike popular stablecoins like Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC), will not be a private stablecoin because it is totally decentralized, according to Banbury.
The new stablecoin is dubbed the “offshore RMB stablecoin” because its operation would be limited to global trading, according to the executive:
“The term ‘offshore’ refers to the RMB’s use for international trading purposes — not domestic trading. The digital yuan is used exclusively for domestic purposes. As such, the offshore RMB is not an ‘offshore yuan.’ The digital yuan is for domestic purposes overseen by the People’s Bank of China.”
The offshore RMB stablecoin is controlled by the Shanghai ShuTu Blockchain Research Institute, a part of the Conflux Tree-Graph Institute dedicated to blockchain research and development, according to Banbury.
He stated that the stablecoin does not yet have a designated ticker because the development team is currently deciding when to launch it.
China, one of the first countries to introduce a CBDC, has continued to tighten down on cryptocurrency trading and mining this year, with local officials closing down many mining farms and stopping crypto trade operations.