China’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) — the digital yuan, or eCNY — has received upgrades giving it smart contract functionality alongside a series of newly unveiled use cases. The smart contract function was launched on the Meituan app, a Chinese app offering retail and food delivery services, according to a Jan. 17 report by local cryptocurrency media outlet 8btc. When Meituan users place an order and pay with their e-CNY wallet, a smart contract triggers and searches for keywords and purchased items in their order. If a user buys something on the list of keywords for the day, they …

ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood believes that digital wallets and blockchain tech were among “game-changing innovations” that the equity markets largely ignored in 2022. In a Jan. 12 blog post on the ARK Invest website, Wood suggested that the equity market faced a “wall of worry” in 2022, caused by fears of entrenched inflation and higher interest rates, and largely ignored a number of innovative technologies. Wood highlighted that digital wallets are “replacing cash and credit cards,” noting that they overtook cash as the top transaction method for offline commerce in 2020. Further arguing that digital wallets should not be …

The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) has completed the first trial of its central bank digital currency (CBDC), the Digital Turkish Lira, and has signaled plans to continue testing throughout 2023. According to a statement released by the CBRT on Dec. 29, the central bank authority said it successfully executed its “first payment transactions” using the digital Lira. It said it will continue to run limited, closed circuit pilot tests with technology stakeholders in the first quarter of 2023, before expanding it to include selected banks and financial technology companies in the rest of the year. Press …

A former official of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the country’s central bank, has expressed disappointment that China’s digital yuan is seeing little use. Xie Ping, a former PBOC research director and current finance professor at Tsinghua University, made critical public comments about China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) at a recent university conference, according to a Dec. 28 Caixin report. Xie noted that cumulative digital yuan transactions had only crossed $14 billion (100 billion yuan) in October, two years after launch. “The results are not ideal,” he said, adding that “usage has been low, highly inactive.” Despite the …

China’s wallet app for its digital yuan central bank digital currency (CBDC) introduced a feature for users to send money in an electronic version of traditional “red packets” to try to attract new users. The new feature was released over the weekend, around one month ahead of the Chinese New Year on Jan. 22, as reported by the South China Morning Post on Dec. 26. The “red packets,” called hongbao in China, are traditionally used for gifting money around the Chinese New Year and other celebrations as a gesture of good luck. The rising use of digital payments has seen …

This year saw an influx of trademark applications filed by various companies looking to get in on the Web3 action. By November, a total number of 4999 US trademark applications had been filed for cryptocurrencies and digital related goods/services — this according to USPTO licensed trademark attorney, Mike Kondoudis. According to the USPTO licensed trademark attorney, the future of the Web3 ecosystem looks "bright" and that "mainstream adoption is inevitable." Learn more about the impact of Web3 trademark applications filed on the future of the Web3 ecosystem in Cointelegraph’s interview with Mike Kondoudis below. Cointelegraph covered a wide range of …

Digital payments platform PayPal has teamed up with Metamask’s parent company, ConsenSys, to allow Metamask users to purchase and transfer Ethereum (ETH) via PayPal's platform. According to the announcement on Dec. 14, the service will initially be rolled out to only select PayPal users within the United States, since the US is one of Metamask’s largest markets, user-wise. Our US users will now be able to fund their wallet with ETH via @PayPal! Rolling out in the next weeks in the US, excl. Hawaii, through our mobile app (make sure to update to v5.13.0)https://t.co/392JwFYF3m — MetaMask (@MetaMask) December 14, 2022 …

The Bank of England (BOE) is seeking a “proof of concept” for a wallet that will be able to hold a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). On Dec. 9, the BOE posted a request for applications on the United Kingdom government's Digital Marketplace, a service where government organizations can solicit work for digital projects. Simple guidelines for what the proof-of-concept wallet would have to achieve were outlined, with the wallet seemingly only needing to offer basic functionality such as a signup process, a way to update details, and show balances and transactions amongst other requirements such as displaying notifications. Of …

The most talked about crypto lawsuit involving the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ripple is approaching its conclusion after a two-year-long battle. On Dec. 2 the SEC and Ripple both filed redacted replies to each other’s opposition to motions for summary judgment. Ripple argued in its motion document that the SEC has failed to prove that its offering of XRP between 2013 and 2020 was an offer or sale of an “investment contract” and therefore a security under federal security laws. Ripple concluded the document by stating that “the court should grant Defendant’s Motion and should deny …

On Nov. 18, Grayscale, the asset manager running the world’s largest Bitcoin (BTC) fund, released a statement detailing the security of its digital assets products and affirming that it won’t share its proof of reserves with customers. “Due to recent events, investors are understandably inquiring deeper into their crypto investments,” the statement begins, which is quite the understatement following the implosion of FTX and the inquiry into Sam Bankman-Fried’s questionable leadership. In no time, the question on everyone’s lips became clear. Will Grayscale be next? The answer is that it’s unlikely. And that’s largely because the people at the top, …

The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has introduced a draft concept for its central bank digital currency (CBDC) candidate digital hryvnia, or e-hryvnia. Ukraine’s central bank on Nov. 28 released a statement on the concept of e-hryvnia, which aims to perform all the functions of money by supplementing cash and non-cash forms of the hryvnia as its key purpose. The NBU said it has presented the e-hryvnia concept and continues developing the CBDC project with participants of the virtual assets market, payment firms and state bodies. According to the announcement, the central bank is currently considering and developing three possible …

Decentralized lending protocol, MakerDAO, has voted against crypto investment firm CoinShares' proposal to invest between 100million and 500million worth of the community’s funds, into a portfolio of corporate debt securities and government-backed bonds for yield, as an investment strategy. 72.43% of the community votes went against CoinShares' proposal to invest MakerDAO’s funds into various traditional assets. If the community had voted in favor of CoinShare’s proposal, the crypto investment firm would have provided “a variable APY above the SOFR interest rate (3.01% as of October 26, 2022) in the community’s preferred currency (DAI, USDC, USD…) to MakerDAO'', which would have …