Digital Yuan Enjoys Adoption At Beijing Winter Olympics

During the 2022 Winter Games competitors, tourists, and planners may invest more than $300,000 per day in China’s digital Yuan, as shown in a Reuters article citing officials from the People’s Bank of China (PBoC).

The Olympics have aided the acceptance of the Digital Yuan

In its most recent study, China’s new cryptocurrency, the e-CNY, was used to make almost 2 million Yuan ($315,761) in transactions per day.

Mu Changchun, the Director Of the Department of the Cryptocurrency Exchange Research Institute, presented the findings at an Atlantic Council teleconference. “I have a general estimate that there are many or a couple million digital yuan in transactions per day,” he remarked at the time, “but I don’t have accurate figures.”

Its most recent study is notable because of the massive number of people who witnessed the Games, as well as the reality that it may be used by athletes, coaches, and media from all around the world through mobile apps, physical payment cards, or wristbands.

“It appears that all overseas users utilize hardware accounts.” Domestic customers are the major customers of software digital currencies,” Changchun stated.

Chinese tech giants such as JD.com and WeChat have recently signed up for the e-CNY retail distribution pilot.

China completed its CBDC expansion in 2019, and the government has spent the past 2 – 3 years studying its implementation in the retailing industry. The CBDC pilot started as a government transportation subsidy for government employees and has subsequently expanded to include vast numbers of people and businesses alike.

As per Zou Lan, chief of the PBOC’s financial markets division, cumulative e-CNY transactions totaled 87.57 billion yuan ($13.68 billion) in the 4th quarter of 2021. By the end of October 2021, nearly 10 million shops had enabled digital yuan accounts.

Fears about the safety of the e-CNY

The presence of the e-CNY at the Events has sparked worries about data privacy and security.

In a letter to President Joe Biden’s management earlier this month, Marco Rubio, a Florida Member of congress and Deputy Chairman of the Senate Expert Panel, asked what steps were being set up to protect athletes from “snooping and exploitation,” and described the digital yuan as a “tremendous security issue to users.”

One of Britain’s spy leaders, Jeremy Fleming, advised in a December discussion with the Financial Times that, while crypto currencies offered a huge chance to revolutionize payment services, the software may allow Beijing to surveil users and impose control over global transactions.

The PBOC, which manages the e-CNY, claims that private info security is a primary aim.

PBOC governor Yi Gang noted in November that the bank gathers “minimal and required” details in e-CNY applications and strictly monitors the retention and use of private details.

Three Republican members of Congress proposed an absolute prohibition on Americans utilizing the digital yuan last year, writing:

“Even as the Chinese Communist Party purports to be focused on digitalizing bank currency notes, Athletes must be alerted that the digital yuan could be used to track Chinese citizens and guests to China on an unprecedented scale in the anticipation that they will hold digital yuan assets on their phones and use them when they return.”

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