As part of its testing program for the crypto version of the yuan, the People’s Bank of China will give to 50 thousand residents of Shenzhen 200 yuan for free, which they have to spent within six days.
The Shenzhen authorities will conduct a pilot program, under which 10 million yuan (or nearly $1.6 million at current exchange rates) will be distributed as part of the testing of the People’s Bank cryptocurrency. The project will be financed by the Luohu County Administration, as reported by the local newspaper Sina Finance.
RMB 10 million will be distributed in a lottery format, with 50,000 winners. The registration process is open from October 9 to October 11, and the lottery will be run by the Shenzhen Municipal Cyberspace Administration. To participate, one must provide information about their name, ID-card, and mobile phone number.
Winners will be able to use a wallet registered with the Bank of China, Construction Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank, or the Agricultural Bank with 200 yuan (roughly $30) digital currency. They can be spent from 12 to 18 October at one of the 3,389 participating outlets. The list is available on the lottery website.
The money received as part of the lottery cannot be transferred to another person or withdrawn. The unspent money will be debited from wallets after October 18th.
Earlier this week, the central bank reported that it processed transactions worth 1.1 billion yuan (more than $162 million) as part of testing the digital currency. Deputy Chairman of the regulator Fan Yifei announced this at the Sibos 2020 conference and highlighted that these have been the biggest central bank digital currency tests in the commercial environment so far in the world.
