Millions of dollars worth of China’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) has been handed out across the country over the Lunar New Year period in a bid to boost its takeup. According to a Feb. 6 report in the Global Times, an English-language outlet of the state-ran People’s Daily newspaper, around 200 “activities” for the e-CNY were launched across the country during the holiday period. These "activities" were made to “promote consumption” — the first of such since the government recently relaxed COVID-19 restrictions. Multiple cities reportedly gave away over $26.5 million, or 180 million yuan worth of the CBDC …

According to local news outlet JS China, on Feb. 1, an annual meeting regarding the trial of the digital yuan central bank digital currency (e-CNY CBDC) was attended by senior Communist Party officials in the City of Suzhou. As part of the meeting outcomes, party officials have set a tentative key performance indicator (KPI) of 2 trillion CNY ($300 billion) for e-CNY CBDC transactions in the city by the end of 2023 to be implemented by municipal administrators through promotional efforts. Officials have also set a target of processing $30 billion in e-CNY loans for small and mid-sized businesses in …

Authorities from the Hainan province in southern China have vowed to increase oversight on the nonfungible token (NFT) sector to “promote the healthy development” of the sector and to stomp out fraud and other associated risks. In a separate announcement, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) also announced that it is working on new features for its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot program, referred to as the digital yuan or eCNY. NFT oversight In a public notice posted on Jan. 29, Hainan’s market regulator and nine other agencies from the province outlined a lengthy plan to tackle the NFT …

China’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) — the digital yuan, or eCNY — has received upgrades giving it smart contract functionality alongside a series of newly unveiled use cases. The smart contract function was launched on the Meituan app, a Chinese app offering retail and food delivery services, according to a Jan. 17 report by local cryptocurrency media outlet 8btc. When Meituan users place an order and pay with their e-CNY wallet, a smart contract triggers and searches for keywords and purchased items in their order. If a user buys something on the list of keywords for the day, they …

The People’s Bank of China, or PBoC, has begun including the country’s central bank digital currency, the e-CNY, in reports measuring the amount of currency in circulation. According to a 2022 financial statistics report released on Jan. 10, the PBoC said there was 13.61 billion digital yuan — roughly $2 billion at the time of publication — in circulation as of Dec. 31. The currency in circulation grew at a rate of 15.3% in December 2022, with the broad money supply reported to be 266.43 trillion yuan. The PBoC reported adding the digital yuan to its figures had not caused …

A former official of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the country’s central bank, has expressed disappointment that China’s digital yuan is seeing little use. Xie Ping, a former PBOC research director and current finance professor at Tsinghua University, made critical public comments about China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) at a recent university conference, according to a Dec. 28 Caixin report. Xie noted that cumulative digital yuan transactions had only crossed $14 billion (100 billion yuan) in October, two years after launch. “The results are not ideal,” he said, adding that “usage has been low, highly inactive.” Despite the …

China’s wallet app for its digital yuan central bank digital currency (CBDC) introduced a feature for users to send money in an electronic version of traditional “red packets” to try to attract new users. The new feature was released over the weekend, around one month ahead of the Chinese New Year on Jan. 22, as reported by the South China Morning Post on Dec. 26. The “red packets,” called hongbao in China, are traditionally used for gifting money around the Chinese New Year and other celebrations as a gesture of good luck. The rising use of digital payments has seen …

The United States will go to the voting booths on Nov. 8 to decide the fate of all 435 members of the House of Representatives and 34 out of the 100 Senate seats. The outcome will decide the prevailing power balance in Washington and has the potential to affect the crypto industry. Perhaps that’s why 38% of eligible voters will consider candidates’ positions on crypto, according to a recent survey. Another survey suggests that crypto regulation is a bipartisan issue, with 87% of Democratic and 76% of Republican respondents saying they want clarity from the U.S. government on digital assets. …

Researchers from a Chinese state-run think tank have floated the idea of an Asia-wide digital currency with the aim to reduce its reliance on a United States dollar-based economy. The views of researchers Liu Dongmin, Song Shuang, and Zhou Xuezhi from a unit of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) were published in an issue of the “World Affairs journal” posted online in late September, who said the establishment of an “Asian yuan” token would lower Asia’s reliance on the U.S. dollar. Much like similar existing and trialed Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), the researchers said distributed ledger technology …

The People’s Bank of China, or PBoC, will reportedly expand deployment of its central bank digital currency, the e-CNY, to four of the country’s provinces, including Guangdong. According to a Tuesday report from the South China Morning Post, PBoC deputy governor Fan Yifei said at an event in Suzhou that the bank would be rolling out e-CNY trials to the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Hebei and Sichuan. With a combined population of more than 360 million people, the reported move would be a marked expansion of the central bank’s CBDC plans, which has been largely limited to individual cities, merchants, …

Australian Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg has released a new draft bill aimed at clamping down on digital asset exchanges, stablecoins, and China’s central bank digital currency, the e-Yuan. In a statement on Sept. 18, Senator Bragg stated that “Australia must keep pace with the global race for regulation on digital assets” as “it is essential that the parliament drives law reform” on the matter. The new draft bill, titled Digital Assets (Market Regulation) Bill 2022, calls for the introduction of licenses for digital asset exchanges, digital asset custody services, stablecoin issuers, as well as disclosure requirements for facilitators of the …

According to local news outlet Sohu.com, on Tuesday, the state-owned Bank of China has announced a new program to bridge primary school education with smart contracts. In a combined partnership with local education and financial authorities, parents residing in the city of Chengdu, located in China's Sichuan province, will be able to enroll their children in after-school or extracurricular lessons using the digital yuan central bank digital currency, or e-CNY. Under the pilot test, parents start by paying a deposit to a private educational entity for a series of lessons. Afterward, a smart contract binds each lesson on a pro-rata …