Back in April, the Chinese Government started the ambitious plan to challenge the Bitcoin and international currencies such as Dollars, Euros and Sterling Pounds. They started a trial program for the official digital version of the yuan, with a limited roll-out in the cities of Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu, and Xiong’an. The city of Xiong'an is a new “smart” city in the making, southwest of Beijing, conceived by Xi Jinping, China's President. The trial will conclude before the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022 and the direct result will be the creation of the virtual yuan and a shift in the global balance of economic influence. Once the national roll-out begins, things will escalate quickly because over 80% of smartphone users in China regularly pay for transactions on their devices, the highest rate in the world.
As a follow up, the Guangzhou’s city government launched a 1 billion yuan subsidy fund to support development of the block-chain industry and at the start of October, China shared $1.5 million worth of digital Yuan. This was the country's biggest public tests and another step towards a cashless China. The Chinese Government carried out a lottery in the district of Shenzhen, sharing 10 million yuan to 50,000 people. The lucky winners were selected from approximately 2 million applicants, and they can spend the digital yuan at over 3 thousand merchants. The district of Shenzhen is China's tech hub, hosting Huawei, Tencent and many other tech companies.
The digital yuan is issued and controlled by the Bank of China, and will work with other digital wallets such as Alipay and WeChatPay. China acellerated the implementation as other countries are planning to launch Central Bank backed cryptocurrencies, pegged to the local currency.
Tether plan for a Chinese Yuan-Pegged Stable coin on the Ethereum chain wasn't successfull while the Tether Euro (EURT) is still under discussions. The most progressive approach comes from France, who's effort to develop an stable-coin pegged on Euro is moving forward. Tezos was selected for the technological evolution of the project. Other countries such as Italy, the Netherlands and Lithuania, also consider developing stable-coins while Sweden plans to develop the E-Krona on Corda
