Opinion: "Token Exit" May Become a New Application Scenario for Central Bank Digital Currencies

Deep Tide TechFlow News, June 19 — Caixin Online pointed out that "Token export" (Token Export) is currently not a standard concept in regulatory documents or corporate annual reports, and there are no fully disclosed cases in the open market that cover both "overseas clients calling Chinese AI data centers' tokens" and "cross-border payments, clearing, and final settlement through central bank digital currencies."

Discussions around cross-border payments with central bank digital currencies are shifting from the grand narrative of monetary sovereignty and international financial competition to more practical, transaction-based scenarios. Among these, the "Token export" of AI inference services is seen as a potential key entry point, bundling model capabilities, computing power, electricity, data centers, and industry engineering capabilities into tradable AI service outputs. The core value of central bank digital currencies lies in their "trustworthy settlement protocol" attributes, including the central bank currency's final settlement capability, real-time cross-border clearing efficiency, programmable payment capabilities, multi-party automatic revenue sharing mechanisms, and embedded regulatory visibility. These can be combined with enterprise-level AI service metering systems to realize a closed-loop process from invocation and billing to clearing and settlement.