China's Digital Yuan sees $250 billion in Transactions Since Launch
China's digital yuan sees $250 billion in transactions since launch, but usage is still limited compared to the Nation’s population size
The governor of China's central bank, Yi Gang, said that $250 billion of transactions have been made with China's digital money, the digital yuan, since its launch in January 2022. This was announced at a conference in Singapore on July 19.
As of June, about 1.8 trillion yuan had been transacted with the digital currency. Yi also stated that nearly 950 million transactions had been made by around 120 million wallet users, making an average transaction of $260.
There was about $2.3 billion, or 16.5 billion digital yuan, in circulation at the end of June. However, this makes up only 0.16% of China's total money. The digital yuan is not yet used by many people in China, which has a population of 1.4 billion. Mostly, it is used for payments in China, apart from a few tests in Hong Kong.
The Bank of China Hong Kong started another test for cross-border payments on July 18. This is being done to increase the uses of the digital yuan across borders. This is the third such test in Hong Kong.
In January, the central bank added smart contract functionality to the digital yuan to increase its uses. This means more things can be done with the digital currency.
Since August 2022, the use of the digital yuan has increased by over 70%. But, it is still less than other digital currencies, like Bitcoin. For example, Bitcoin had $8.2 trillion worth of transactions in 2022.
Coinpaprika reports