Author: Xiao Za Legal Team

Introduction

On September 24, 2025, the Digital Renminbi International Operation Center (referred to as "Digital Currency Center"), established and operated by the central bank's Digital Currency Research Institute, was officially unveiled in the Shanghai Lingang New Area. At the same time, the center launched three business platforms: the Digital Payment Platform, the Blockchain Service Platform, and the Digital Asset Platform, which are highly anticipated as the infrastructure of the new era of the financial payment industry. The Xiao Za team believes that the three business platforms carry different functions and are expected to become key entry points for China's opening up to the cryptocurrency business in the future.

Today, we will analyze in detail the significance of the Digital Renminbi International Operation Center for China's cryptocurrency assets.

PART 01 What positive significance does the Digital Currency Center have for cryptocurrency assets?

The Digital Renminbi is not a new concept; major banks have already begun pilot projects for the Digital Renminbi several years ago, primarily in retail scenarios, such as personal transfers, electronic payments, salary disbursement, and tax payments. The establishment of the Digital Currency Center can actually be seen as an expansion of the application scenarios for the Digital Renminbi in China and an attempt at its internationalization.

According to the introduction from the central bank's recommendation meeting, the functions of the three major business platforms of the Digital Currency Center are as follows:

Cross-Border Digital Payment Platform

The main function of this platform is to support the internationalization and cross-border use of the Renminbi. The official introduction clearly states that the platform is positioned to explore the use of central bank digital currency to address the pain points in traditional cross-border payments, achieving comprehensive upgrades through technological integration, ecological reconstruction, and rule innovation, creating a safe, efficient, and inclusive global payment network, providing a "Chinese solution" for cross-border payment cooperation with central bank digital currency, and forming a new ecosystem of cross-border payments that is "non-destructive, interconnected, and compliant."

In simple terms, the Cross-Border Digital Payment Platform is the most important platform of the Digital Currency Center, carrying the function of payment settlement for China's foreign trade. Currently, with the global economy in decline and significant trade friction between China and a certain Western country, establishing a reliable payment settlement system and gradually decoupling from the traditional SWIFT system is an inevitable trend. Thus, it is not difficult to understand the function of the Cross-Border Digital Payment Platform.

Blockchain Service Platform

This platform is primarily positioned to support standardized blockchain transaction switching and on-chain digital Renminbi payment services. According to currently available information, this platform has unified cross-link interfaces, effectively connecting capital flow and information flow, and reducing integration costs. It has already partnered with Ant Chain, Tencent Blockchain, and others to achieve cross-institutional and cross-platform interoperability.

Overall, this platform is essentially a national-level large-scale blockchain, representing an important infrastructure for China.

Digital Asset Platform

The official introduction of this platform is minimal: "It can support the issuance, registration, custody, and trading of compliant digital assets on-chain." However, the Xiao Za team believes that this platform is the one that private entrepreneurs should pay the most attention to. From its positioning, we believe this platform is actually similar to the functions of exchanges holding VATP licenses in Hong Kong, and in the future, it could issue, register, custody, and trade digital assets, akin to a large cryptocurrency exchange.

For example, regarding the issuance function, many RWA projects in China currently want to issue compliantly and are navigating through the sandbox set up by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Currently, not only is the issuance volume small, but it is also affected by certain uncertainties, and since the issuance of a certain photovoltaic project, no new projects have emerged, leading to a "traffic jam" of high-quality assets on the issuance path. If the Digital Asset Platform of the Digital Currency Center can be completed, it will create a pathway for compliant issuance in China, significantly reducing the compliance costs for Chinese enterprises.

Taking trading as another example, we currently do not know the definition and scope of "compliant digital assets." If this platform opens conditional trading for internationally mainstream cryptocurrencies like BTC and ETH, it will address the pain points and difficulties in the disposal of cryptocurrency assets involved in legal cases in China, providing direction for the chaotic disposal actions of judicial and financial departments across the country.

Additionally, common blockchain applications such as blockchain notarization and trade traceability may also have opportunities to be developed on this platform. Overall, the Xiao Za team believes that if this platform can be completed, it will have great potential.

PART 02 Is there a conflict between the Digital Currency Platform and China's current laws and regulations?

Cross-Border Digital Payment Platform

As mentioned earlier, the main function of the Digital Currency Platform is to serve the globalization of the Renminbi. Some partners have misconceptions, conflating "Digital Renminbi" with "Renminbi stablecoins."

In fact, the two are completely different. Fundamentally, the Digital Renminbi is the Renminbi itself, possessing legal tender status and value characteristics, and is China's only legal currency. In contrast, Renminbi stablecoins are privately issued cryptocurrencies that are pegged to the Renminbi or Renminbi bonds as underlying assets and do not qualify as legal tender.

Therefore, the main business of the Digital Currency Platform does not conflict with legal regulations.

Will the Digital Asset Platform become a new window for RWA?

Due to the impact of the announcement issued by the People's Bank of China and six other ministries on September 4, 2017, regarding the prevention of risks associated with token issuance financing (the 9.4 announcement), ICO activities within China have been clearly defined as illegal financial activities and have largely disappeared in recent years. The Xiao Za team has repeatedly warned cryptocurrency practitioners that RWA and ICO are still too closely related, and under the current regulatory environment in China, it is very easy to touch the legal red line, making the compliance of issuing RWA projects domestically relatively poor.

So, will the Digital Asset Platform become a new window for compliant RWA in China? Although there is currently no clear information introducing this business platform, the Xiao Za team holds a positive attitude. Firstly, after years of practice, the understanding of cryptocurrency assets by regulatory and judicial authorities in China has changed significantly (the increasing number of bribery cases involving cryptocurrency assets is a side proof of this), and gradually developing cryptocurrency-related businesses under certain conditions is an inevitable trend.

This can be seen from the relatively open attitude of China's judicial and administrative authorities towards the disposal of cryptocurrency assets involved in legal cases, gradually expanding the scope of practice.

Therefore, the Xiao Za team believes that in the future, the Digital Asset Platform may become a new opportunity for cryptocurrency assets in China, and partners should continue to pay attention.

In Conclusion

After discussing the positive significance of the Digital Currency Center for cryptocurrency assets, it is clear that the establishment of the Digital Currency Center not only broadens the pathways for the application of the Digital Renminbi but also provides a new platform for the standardized development of cryptocurrency assets in China. The three major business platforms of the Digital Currency Center each carry different functions and missions, and private enterprises, in particular, should pay attention to the subsequent development of the Digital Asset Platform.

The Xiao Za team has learned from professionals at the central bank's Digital Currency Research Institute that the three major platforms are still in the initial construction stage, and formal operations and the implementation of various business models will take time, so partners should continue to keep an eye on developments.

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