China names trillions of AI token after the yuan. Should the US worry for the dollar?

2026-03-25 - 12:02

China has officially designated ci yuan as the translation for “token” – the computational units that power tools such as Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini – a move widely seen as devising a new form of global currency for the age of artificial intelligence. In Chinese, ci translates to “word,” while yuan is commonly used as a synonym for “currency”. For instance, the basic unit of the Chinese RMB is the yuan, and most foreign currencies are referred to as yuan in Chinese, prefixed by their respective...