Digital yuan is not popular at the Olympics

The analysts don’t see much point in a Chinese CBDC

09.02.2022 - 13:25

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1 min

What’s new? China debuted its digital yuan at the Winter Olympics, but it is not in high demand from locals and visitors to the capital. Bitcoinist reports that people are leaning towards Visa, Alipay, and WeChat Pay.

Bitcoinist’s material

Why is e-CNY not popular? According to Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University and author of “The Future of Money,” the digital yuan is experiencing some difficulties in terms of usage. Prasad doesn’t see much point in using China’s CBDC when there is Alipay and WeChat Pay.

“These two payment giants have created a lot of economic and political power. They are making it harder for new entrants into the payment space, limiting competition, limiting, potentially, innovation.”

What other problems does the digital yuan have? Eswar Prasad cited security as another disadvantage of e-CNY. According to the professor, the extent to which funds are secure depends on the wallet chosen by the user.

“Anything digital is ultimately going to be traceable. Because no central bank really wants its money to be used without auditability and verifiability of the transactions.”

It will also be recalled that the US authorities have warned their athletes in every possible way against using Chinese digital currency. Perhaps this fact has had an impact on the popularity of e-CNY after all.

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