The volume of the digital yuan in the first half of 2023 soared by almost 1700%
Date: 2023-07-22 Author: Karina Ziganova Categories: CRYPTO PAYMENTS
Explosive growth was recorded against the backdrop of criticism of the project from the former head of research at the People's Bank of China
The volume of transactions using the digital yuan soared to ¥1.8 trillion (just under $250 billion) as of the end of June 2023. Reuters writes about this, referring to the chairman of the People's Bank of China (PBOC) Yi Gan. The growth was almost 1700%, since back in December 2022 the same figure was only ¥100 billion.
At the same time, in fact, as of the end of June, only ¥16.5 billion in digital yuan was in circulation, which is 0.16% of China's total money supply. In total, 950 million transactions were made during the entire testing of the digital state currency in China, and the number of open wallets amounted to 120 million, the head of the Central Bank noted. Until now, the digital yuan is used mainly exclusively in the local market for retail payments.
"It can be seen that now the turnover of the digital yuan is less than a percent of the total money supply. The turnover is very small, but we can support a large number of transactions, which indicates high efficiency and speed," said Yi Gang.
What exactly caused such an abnormal increase in the volume of transactions with the digital yuan is unclear. In April, China transferred the salaries of all state employees in the city of Changshu to the digital yuan. At that time, not only civil servants, but also school teachers, medical staff and journalists of state media fell under "digitalization". At the same time, Beijing began to actively push advertising for the digital yuan in local messengers like WeChat.
At the end of 2022, the former head of research at the PBOC, Xi Ping, criticized the digital yuan. Recall that at that time the volume of the digital yuan was ¥100 billion (at that time ~ $ 14 billion). According to Xi Ping, such a low figure showed a lack of public interest in the digital state currency.
A native of the PBOC noted that financial giants have long been formed in China. Because of this, it is difficult for the authorities to convince citizens to abandon the usual services. According to Xi Ping, Beijing needs to abandon the consumer concept of the digital yuan in order to attract more consumers.
