March 14, 2025
By Tsering Namgyal
Taiwan is unlikely to create a Bitcoin strategic reserve even though the US President Trump has announced such an initiative in the US, a high-level conference in Taiwan heard yesterday.
But the conference, attended by top-level economists, technologists, venture capitalists and a former premier, held in the main financial district underscored the growing awareness of cryptocurrencies and the importance of Bitcoin as a digital asset on the island.
Sean Chen, former premier and central banker, said that the Taipei is unlikely to create a Bitcoin strategic reserve and questioned President Trump’s decision to call it a “strategic reserve.”
“We don’t understand the real meaning behind the word ‘strategic’,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the conference. “Reserves have to have a purpose but word ‘strategic’ could mean anything.”
He said that countries most likely to create Bitcoin strategic reserves are the twin financial centers of Hong Kong or Singapore in Asia.
Cristina Y. Liu, former finance minister and a professor at National Taiwan University, lauded the Bitcoin’s design and believes that the digital assets market is here to stay. She called the birth of Bitcoin a result of the global financial crisis of 2017 and the relentless quantitative easing by the central banks in its aftermath.
“I really admire the Bitcoin White Paper: the beauty of its design is fantastic and its conceptual completeness,” she said.
She also quoted British Nobel Laureate Friederich Hayek who had questioned the monopoly of the central banks to print money. She said it is not just the central banks who have the license to issue currency and that the central banks will always try to destroy Bitcoin.
“In terms of Taiwan, I don’t believe they will create a Bitcoin reserve currency,” she said. “It is absolutely impossible that it will create a reserve currency.”
Stablecoins have an important to role to play by providing liquidity to the crypto market, she said, and the President Trump’s support for stablecoins is to help boost the US dollar. Currently, 93% of the stablecoins are linked to the US dollar, she said.
There is currently a rivalry between stablecoins and Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), said Xu Jiadoing, the Jeffrey Koo Memorial Chair Professor of Soochow University.
He lamented that the misunderstanding among some circles that believe that the central banks will somehow use foreign exchange reserves to buy Bitcoin.
Wu Zhongshu, an economist at the Taiwan Economic Research Institute said that “Bitcoin is volatile and its uses are limited. Bitcoin is not ready for forex reserves due to its volatility.”
If there is one consensus amongst the speakers at the conference, it was that the CBDCs won’t succeed. Chen, the former premier, cited an IMF paper which said that there are scores of nations currently creating CBDC but nobody except China seems to be seriously going ahead with it.
Chien Fu Jeff Lin, chief economist of CTBC Financial Holding Co. Ltd, said that the CBDCs would lead to direct surveillance of citizen’s financial transactions of its citizens. He even cited George Orwell’s apocalyptic novel 1984 in which he predicted a surveillance society.
Furthermore, he said the central banks directly issuing currency to its citizens will lead to the elimination of commercial banks.
“This is the biggest risk. (That is why) I am opposed to CBDCs,” he said.
