Over $300,000 Worth of Digital Yuan Used Daily at the Olympics (Report)

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Every­day trans­ac­tions with China’s dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy dur­ing the Bei­jing Olympic Games account for around 2 mil­lion yuan (approx­i­mate­ly $315,000), a top offi­cial at the nation’s cen­tral bank said. He fur­ther revealed that for­eign users employ hard­ware wal­lets when deal­ing with the prod­uct, while locals pre­fer soft­ware wallets.

Digital Yuan Transactions During The Games

China’s name pops up some­what imme­di­ate­ly when speak­ing of cen­tral bank dig­i­tal cur­ren­cies (CBD­Cs). Over the past sev­er­al months, the most pop­u­lat­ed nation launched many ini­tia­tives to pop­u­lar­ize its dig­i­tal yuan among the broad­er society.

In April 2021, the author­i­ties announced that ath­letes and for­eign vis­i­tors at the 2022 Bei­jing Win­ter Olympics will be able to employ the finan­cial prod­uct. The sports event start­ed ear­li­er this month, and the offi­cials already have data regard­ing the dai­ly dig­i­tal yuan transactions.

Accord­ing to Mu Changchun – Direc­tor-Gen­er­al of the PBOC’s Dig­i­tal Cur­ren­cy Research Insti­tute – over $300,000 worth of e‑CNY is used every day dur­ing the Games. How­ev­er, he spec­i­fied that it is dif­fi­cult to pro­vide exact numbers:

“I have a rough idea that (there are) sev­er­al, or a cou­ple of mil­lion RMB (yuan) of pay­ments every day, but I don’t have exact num­bers yet.”

Mu said that the CBDC is pop­u­lar among for­eign vis­i­tors, too. They pre­fer using hard­ware wal­lets, while Chi­nese res­i­dents favor soft­ware wallets.

It is worth not­ing that the e‑CNY usage dur­ing the Olympics caused ten­sion between Chi­na and the USA. Last year, the Amer­i­can Sen­a­tors Mar­sha Black­burn, Roger Wick­er, and Cyn­thia Lum­mis advised the US Olympic Com­mit­tee to for­bid any usage of the e‑yuan at the Win­ter Olympic Games. The law­mak­ers expressed con­cerns over spy­ing and espionage.

Short­ly after, the Chi­nese For­eign Min­istry stroke back, request­ing that Amer­i­cans “abide by the spir­it” and not make trou­ble out of the finan­cial prod­uct. The offi­cials went fur­ther, stat­ing that the US is unaware of what dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy is exactly.

Digital Yuan Payments on Singles Day

A few months ago, one of the lead­ing Chi­nese e‑commerce plat­forms – JD – enabled cus­tomers to use the e‑CNY for set­tle­ments dur­ing the shop­ping fes­ti­val Sin­gles Day. As such, it became the first com­pa­ny to accept the prod­uct as a means of payment.

Sin­gles Day is an unof­fi­cial hol­i­day that cel­e­brates peo­ple who are not in rela­tion­ships. It is held on Novem­ber 11 (the four “1’s” on the date 11.11 refer to those who don’t have love part­ners). Para­dox­i­cal­ly, it has emerged as one of the largest shop­ping fes­ti­vals in the country.

JD dis­closed that more than 100,000 cus­tomers used the CBDC dur­ing the event.

Fea­tured Image Cour­tesy of Inter­na­tion­al Finance Magazine

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