A dedicated team from the central bank’s Digital Currency Research Lab is now developing the system in a closed-door environment, away from the PBoC’s downtown Beijing headquarters as a report revealed on Sep.5.

China Central Bank’s Digital Currency (CBDC) has begun a “restricted access test” to simulate payment scenarios involving “some commercial and non-governmental organizations”. The test may be the integration of each module developed by CBDC in which the outflow and inflow of digital money will form a complete closed loop.

On September 4, Changchun Mu, deputy director of the Payment and Settlement Department of China’s Central Bank, opened a public course “Fi-tech Frontier: Libra and Digital currency Prospect” on ” iget App”, which was the first public lecture given by central bank officials.

An academy of China’s Central Bank located in Shenzhen has begun to recruit a large number of technical talents in the blockchain area, including the director of trade and financial products, senior economist, business innovation researcher recently.

By August 4, the Digital Currency Institute of the Central Bank had applied for 74 patents for digital currency. According to its patent application, the upcoming CBDC maybe just like a cryptocurrency on a point-to-point trading system, but it will strip away the anonymity and de-centralization like most cryptocurrencies.

The work has been expedited as Facebook unveiled in June its vision for Libra, a global cryptocurrency to facilitate payments. The Libra announcement rattled governments around the world, spurring Congressional hearings in the United States and bold new thinking by central bankers such as Bank of England Governor Mark Carney.

The recent public course on the app has revealed more details about CBDC. The course is divided into 8 lectures, focusing on Libra’s characteristics and impact, the exploration of China’s Central Bank, the principle and characteristics of blockchain technology, and the perspective from the financial authorities. Mu thinks Libra does not adopt pure blockchain technology, but a hybrid architecture, so it can not be regarded as cryptocurrency based on blockchain indeed.

Whenever the CBDC launches, the central bank may not roll it out nationwide on Day One.