China’s CBDC: The Latest Effort to Popularize the Digital Yuan
- The Chinese authorities will give away 15 million yuan ($2.3 million) in e-CNY to the residents of Shenzhen’s Futian district.
- The move aims to boost the adoption of China’s CBDC and promote the financial product among broad society.
- According to coverage by Global Times, the latest such move includes the distribution of over $2 million worth of digital yuan to residents of Futian (the central business district of China’s third-largest city – Shenzhen).
- The e-CNY will be separated into 130,000 red packets and will be given away on a lottery method using WeChat payment.
- This is not the first time Shenzhen’s authorities have distributed digital yuan among the city’s population.
- At the end of 2021, the number of Chinese who have opened digital yuan wallets topped 140 million, making up about 10% of the total population.
- The interest in the product continued to surge, and that figure soared to over 260 million at the beginning of 2022.
