Shenzhen Residents to Receive 15 Million Yuan in Digital Currency – Featured Bitcoin News

On Friday, 130,000 Shenzheners will receive 15 million yuan worth of central bank digital currency (CBDC). With no minimum purchase, the digital yuan is available at nearly 5,000 retailers.

Digital Yuan Pilot Continues

China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), continues to test its central bank digital currency (CBDC) with another digital yuan giveaway.

The government of Shenzhen’s Futian district has announced that 15 million yuan ($2.27 million) in digital RMB (e-CNY) will be given to local residents Friday, Global Times reported. The money will be split into 130,000 packets of red and distributed via raffle through Wechat payments.

The red packets are available for purchase at almost 5,000 shops in the district, with no minimum purchases required.

The Chinese government has been giving digital yuan to Shenzhen residents for many years. Shenzhen is the city that was chosen as one of the initial pilot areas for the e-CNY. The government distributed 10 million digital Yuan to Shenzhen residents in October 2020. Red packets could not be used in Luohu’s 33989 shops at that point.

Earlier this month, China’s central bank added more cities to test its digital currency.

Besides Shenzhen, the digital yuan is also being tested in Shanghai, Suzhou, Xiong’an, Chengdu, Hainan, Changsha, Xi’an, Qingdao, Dalian, Tianjin, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, and six cities in the Zhejiang province that will host the 2022 Asian Games in September. Hangzhou is Ningbo. Jinhua and Shaoxing are also among the six cities.

According to data from China’s central bank, there were 261 million users of digital yuan at the end 2021. e-CNY has also been used to make transactions in excess of 87.5 billion yuan (roughly $13.8 billion).

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Kevin Helms

Kevin is a graduate of Austrian Economics. He discovered Bitcoin in 2011, and has been an advocate ever since. He is interested in Bitcoin security and open-source software, network effects, and the intersection of cryptography and economics.