The rising adoption of digital assets has led some countries to increase their support for digital currencies. Earlier today, China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), announced the continued expansion of the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital yuan.
The digital currency is currently undergoing a pilot program that has been expanded to 17 other provinces in China. The country’s central bank said it is focusing on rolling out a system that allows consumers to “scan with one code.” The report noted:
The People’s Bank of China said that in the future, it will continue to carry out innovative applications of digital renminbi to realize the interconnection between the digital renminbi system and traditional electronic payment tools, so that consumers can scan with a single code, and merchants can also. support multiple transactions without increasing costs as much as possible.
Two New Features Introduced
In addition to the expansion of the CBDC pilot program in China, the country’s central bank also wants to increase the use cases of the digital yuan. It will introduce two core features, offline payments, and smart contract capabilities, to CBDC.
The offline payment feature, launched on January 23, will allow users to make payments without having to access the internet. It will work through NFC (Near-field) technology that allows communication between two electronic devices at a distance of 4 cm or less to confirm the payment.
The smart contract feature, on the other hand, was introduced earlier this month e-commerce applications Meituan allows users to win a daily prize of $1,312 which is divided among the winners.
China To Promote Adoption Of Digital Yuan (CBDC).
Improve adoption of CBDC from the start, China announced plans to offer wealth management products that accept digital yuan payments in pilot provinces. Major investment banks such as China Galaxy Securities will offer this wealth management service to only a limited number of customers.
In particular, China’s central bank has begun to expand establishment of the CBDC over the past year. The PBOC has carried out almost 30 “red envelope activities” in pilot areas to promote low-carbon consumption and travel and create digital yuan as a payment method with practical means for consumers.
While CBDC adoption is just starting to warm up, digital assets are starting to become a significant investment. Over the past few weeks, investors have increased their bets on the asset, pushing the global market cap to $1 trillion and above for the first time in five months.
Despite the small retracement in crypto assets today, the global cryptocurrency market still remains above the $1 trillion mark. It currently sits at $1.09 trillion, at the time of writing down 1.8% in the last 24 hours.
Featured images from Getty images, charts from TradingView.