The former first director of CBDC development at the People's Bank of China, Yao Qian, became a person of interest in the government investigation. This is reported by local media.
According to them, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China suspects the official of "serious violations" of discipline and the law. The specific reasons for the investigation were not disclosed.
Yao currently holds the position of Director of the Bureau of Supervision of Science and Technology at the Securities Regulatory Commission of China.
He is an important figure in the Chinese blockchain community. From 2017 to 2018, he was the first head of the digital currency research department of the local central bank and was nicknamed "cryptopapa".
Yao Qian. Data: 21jingji.com .After ceasing active CBDC development, Yao continued to explore the field. In 2021, he predicted that national digital currencies would one day be able to work on the Ethereum blockchain.
In 2022, his book dedicated to Web3 was published.
On April 8, 2024, Yao published an article about bitcoin ETFs and cryptocurrency regulation in the United States.
Recall that since 2017, Yao Qian called CBDC \"the pearl of fintech\" and called for speeding up their launch.
China has been testing the digital yuan since the end of 2019. In July 2023, one of the largest state—owned banks, Bank of China, began testing e—CNY payment by connecting to SIM cards.