Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance.

This is how to get started, how to get better, and how to front front the opportunity.

This is Ryan Sean Adams.

I'm here with David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bankless.

Wow, epic episode on China's central bank digital currency, a digital currency revolution that's going on that we really haven't uncovered in crypto up to this point.

Richard Turn was the perfect guest for this incredibly comprehensive overview of what's going on in China in this important field.

David, what were your thoughts on this episode?

Yeah, the biggest takeaway I had is that unless you have actually like intently gone after in research, what China is doing with the central bank digital currency is,

then you do not know, and so there is a mountain, there's a absolute world going on in China that unless you have actually been researching yourself, like you don't know what's going on, because what I thought was going on and turns out what's actually going on are two totally separate things.

I thought the central bank digital currency was just a basic, you know, some sort of fintech layer on top of a central bank that allows for easy paying.

Yeah, right, like blockchain, Bitcoin nonsense, no, no, no, no, like Richard Turin laid down the story of the Chinese central bank digital currency, and it is a force to be reckoned with, and he was a fantastic guest to tell us the story.

And I think the other really cool thing about central bank digital currencies is that they are inherently inspired by crypto, by Bitcoin, by the technology that we created.

But the Chinese bank digital currency has taken some of the parts that are most suited to them and applied it to their banking layer.

But what is the resulting product of that is something much grander than I think what people give credit for.

Yeah, it's so true though, so like we get these news clips, you know, come out of whatever.

I don't know if it's like an East West communication thing or like a translation thing or what it is, but it's just suddenly, you know, China is doing this with the central bank digital currency, and there's never any detail, right?

I've like forever since I've been in crypto wanted to understand the detail of this thing because it's been an active project since like 2014, 2015, we've been hearing about it.

And for the first time, this is a comprehensive overview. And like here's what I feel like the story is, David, over the last 10 years, while the US banking system stayed stagnant, China really digitized its banking system.

And it turns banking services into like a giant app platform with WeChat and Alipay, these are organizations you're going to find out more about through this podcast.

And through this digital banking functionality, it's really leapfrogged the West.

So I made the comment like, hey, here we are with ACH transfers that take three days, my transfers, we have to show up in person.

You don't have to do that in China anymore, right? Like they digitized this.

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