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Digital yuan withdrawals are now available at more than 3,000 ATMs in Beijing, according to leading Chinese banks. That allows residents of the capital city to swap so-called “e-CNY” for physical Yuan, and vice versa.
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the Agricultural Bank of China, both with branches in Beijing, have taken the lead in enabling exchanges between the digital and traditional versions of the national fiat money.
A number of ATMs have been placed in the city’s busiest shopping districts. ICBC operates over 3,000 all-in-one ATMs across the capital city, and the option to go digital has been activated on those machines. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China became the first banking institution in Beijing to provide digital yuan-cash exchange when it enabled the feature on its deposit and withdrawal teller machines.
According to Xinhua News Agency, the Agricultural Bank of China has also installed more than ten ATM machines in Beijing’s Wangfujing neighborhood, all of which permit the exchange of digital yuan for cash. This area of the Chinese capital, centered on Wangfujing Street, is a prominent retail zone.
Snuffing Bitcoin and Promoting Digital “CCPcoin”
China finally made its big move against decentralized cryptos over the past two weeks, purging bitcoin miners centered in the Sichuan region. Many predicted the move will mean huge technological innovation losses in China’s future.
But the CCP is between a rock and digital hard place when it comes to decentralized blockchain technologies. Their totalitarian system is the least suited on earth when it comes to accommodating the innovations that those technologies represent. The dispensing of intermediaries and privileged control groups prone to corruption, is at the heart of the innovation of blockchains, and what creates their financial and wider social efficiencies.
The digital yuan is the only way China can go — completely centralized, and built for surveillance. Its launch in the capital follows prior trials in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. The ABC, along with ICBC, is one of the country’s top four state-owned commercial banks.
As we have predicted in the Trends Journal, China will continue to be on the forefront of moving to a digital currency that can provide granular financial analytics, but also a temptation to further surveill and control the activities of their populace. See our previous articles:
28 July, 2020, “IT’S OFFICIAL: DIRTY CASH TO DIGITAL TRASH”
20 October 2020, “CHINA: DIGITAL CURRENCY WORLD LEADER”
21 February 2021, “LOOK WHO’S MINTING DIGITAL CURRENCY NOW (OR IN THE NEAR FUTURE)”