According to a report from Reuters on November 2, China’s Digital Yuan CBDC has already seen approximately $300 million spent by citizens.
- Speaking at Hong Kong’s “Fintech Week” conference, Governor of the People’s Bank of China Yi Gang said that more than 2 billion yuan, or $299.07 million, had been spent in 4 million separate transactions
- Gang also said that one important task going forward would be the creation of a “fairly complicated and fairly complete legal framework”
- China also airdropped a total of $1.5 million of the CBDC to 50,000 citizens of Shenzhen for use at select local retailers in October 2020
- The token was quickly spent by China’s tech-savvy public, who spent $1.3 million of the $1.5 million by October 18
- While China is leading the CBDC charge, several other nations and entities are also working on similar initiatives, including France, Australia, and the European Central Bank
- Meanwhile, Paypal is working on partnering with central banks to support CBDCs on its platform, having announced cryptocurrency support in early October 2020
- Governments are accelerating CBDC development efforts to combat stablecoins and Facebook’s Libra, worried that it might challenge their sovereignties
