The 2022 Winter Olympics participants, visitors and organizers could be spending more than $300,000 in China’s digital yuan every day, according to new reports citing officials from the People’s Bank of China. The e-CNY, China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), is being used to make 2 million yuan ($316,000) or more worth of payments each day, PBoC’s Digital Currency Research Institute director-general Mu Changchun said. The official provided the data during a webinar hosted by the Atlantic Council, Reuters reported Tuesday. “I have a rough idea that there are several, or a couple of million digital yuan of payments every …

The 2022 Winter Olympics, officially called the XXIV Olympic Winter Games, kicked off on Feb. 4 in Beijing with crypto being a major part of the event, partly because of the Chinese government’s digital currency ambitions. The cryptocurrency community hasn’t had strong ties to the Olympics over the last few years. The last major headline-grabbing interaction was when the Dogecoin (DOGE) community helped fund the Jamaican bobsled team in 2014 so they could attend the event in Sochi. The 2022 Winter Olympics, however, are making history due to the presence of nonfungible tokens (NFTs), Bitcoin- (BTC)-supported athletes, the launch of …

China’s food delivery giant Meituan has become the latest tech firm to integrate central bank digital currency (CBDC) payments for its services. Meituan users can link the digital yuan wallet to their service app and use it for a range of daily services such as booking hotels, cabs and paying at restaurants. The food delivery and daily services app recorded 660 million transacting customers last year, and the integration of e-CNY payments would only help the Beijing government to test its sovereign digital currency more widely. Over the past few months, major tech giants in the country such as WeChat …

The official digital yuan wallet app that was released as a pilot version to be used in select cities has still managed to top app store charts in its first week. Developed by the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), the app became available for download on Chinese Android and Apple app stores last Tuesday. The app is still in an experimental phase and is only accessible to select individuals through authorized e-CNY service providers. While anyone in China could download the app, its usage is limited to select cities. Despite these limitations, the South …

As China's central bank steps up its effort to create a digital currency, the country has released a pilot edition of its digital yuan wallet application on mobile phone app stores. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) digital currency research institute developed the "e-CNY (Pilot Version)" app, which was available for download on Chinese Android and Apple app stores on Tuesday in Shanghai. According to a tweet from BlockBeats, a local news source, individual users in China now can download an earlier version of the app to test opening and managing a personal wallet, as well as digital yuan transactions. …

Shanghai, China's most crowded city, is looking for ways to use metaverse in public services over the next five years. Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology's five-year development plan for the electronic information industry listed four frontiers for exploration, and one of them is metaverse. According to a CNBC report, the paper called for promoting the metaverse's use in public services, business offices, social leisure, industrial manufacturing, production safety, and electronic games. The commission plans to encourage further study and development of underlying technologies, such as sensors, real-time interactions and blockchain technology. China's interest in new technology has …

Despite the People’s Bank of China’s (PBOC) warning on metaverse and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) in November, more than a thousand Chinese companies have submitted thousands of metaverse-related trademark applications. In a summit back in November, Gou Wenjun, the PBOC’s AML and Analysis Center Director, warned about the dangers of digital assets. According to Gou, because virtual assets have no physical basis, they can be used for illegal financial activities. Gou cited activities such as “illegal fundraising, pyramid schemes, and fraud.” However, ignoring the PBOC’s warnings, Chinese companies rushed to register metaverse-related trademarks such as “metaverse satellite” and “metaverse exhibition.” According …

While some major Chinese cryptocurrency-related publications seem to be shutting down, a number of local news agencies continue running by moving to social media like Twitter. China’s most recent crypto ban would not significantly affect local crypto media sources as there are a number of ways to disseminate industry information, according to an executive at one of the biggest crypto publications in China. The exec, who asked to remain anonymous, told Cointelegraph on Dec. 1 that several local crypto sites have been moving their community to other media channels like Twitter and Telegram after the government enforced a new crypto …

China’s crackdown on crypto is expanding into the metaverse and nonfungible tokens (NFTs), an executive at the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) recently implied. Speaking at a national financial security summit, Gou Wenjun, the director of the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) unit at the PBoC, pointed to the risks associated with leaving the new trends of the crypto ecosystem like NFTs and metaverse unregulated. He claimed that, while people would use said virtual assets for privacy and wealth appreciation, they are also prone to be used for illicit purposes like money laundering and tax evasion. The fast-paced innovation of the crypto …

The use of cryptocurrencies to evade international sanctions from various international governmental organizations like the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, among others, has been a concern for regulators ever since the creation of cryptocurrencies. The rapidly increasing adoption of digital currencies in the last two years makes this discussion more important than ever, especially with the advent of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) like the digital yuan. In an interview on Nov.17, United States Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said that the efficacy of U.S. sanctions would not be undermined by central bank …

E-commerce giant JD.com took payments in China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) at a massive local shopping event. JD.com accepted digital yuan (e-CNY) for payment on its e-commerce application for the Singles Day promotion period which began on Oct. 31 and ended on Nov. 11, the firm confirmed on Thursday. Singles Day is an unofficial shopping holiday in the country that also celebrates people who aren't in a romantic relationship. “100,000 people had used e-CNY on JD.com’s app during the Singles Day promotion period as of today,” a spokesperson for JD.com told Cointelegraph. “We will continue to work with related …

During a virtual video session at the Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies' 30th Anniversary Conference, People's Bank of China governor Gang Yi discussed recent developments regarding the country's central bank digital currency, or CBDC, known as the digital yuan (e-CNY). Gang specifically addressed the issue of privacy surrounding the Digital Yuan in the following statement, as translated by Cointelegraph: We are taking a high degree of focus on issues surrounding the security of personal information and the digital yuan and have made relevant regulatory and technological adjustments to meet this objective. We have adopted a principle of anonymity …