In China, while testing the Chinese digital yuan, people performed around 20,000 transactions via the retail platform of JD.com.
The website unveiled that 80% of participants, who were born in the 1980s and 1990s, utilized the platform to conduct digital currency transactions, with an average transaction cost exceeding $1,527.
The e-commerce website also reported that 10,000 offline stores participated in testing the digital yuan at a well-known shopping festival in Suzhou.
Analogies of the Suzhou experiment were carried out throughout China. They involved the distribution of approximately 100,000 so-called “red envelopes” for $З million in digital yuan.
“In 2021, China will continue to search for new methods for testing the digital yuan, but a large-scale launch is still rather unlikely, ” noted Cao Yin, managing director of the Shanghai Digital Renewal Fund.
He added that the Chinese government will continue testing until officials are confident that the digital currency can be safely launched:
“In this matter, we can only compete with ourselves, so we do not need to hurry.”
The People’s Bank of China conducted digital yuan pilot programs in the Spring in Shenzhen, Chengdu, Suzhou, and Xingang. As of November, more than $4 million transactions were processed during this period for a total of about $З00 million.
The central bank recently announced that it will increase the number of test cities to additionally include Beijing, Tianjin, and the adjacent Hebei province.
The bank is believed to be launching the national digital currency before the 2022 Winter Olympics, which is slated for February in Beijing.
