Last month, the People’s Bank of China gave its new digital yuan a trial run in Shenzhen, the border city adjacent to Hong Kong. It was a huge success.
More than 2 million people queued up for a chance to become one of just 50,000 trial users.
This is the first major central bank digital currency (CBDC) released in the real world. But it will not be the last. The Bank of France and the European Central Bank are both racing to create a digital euro. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently held a conference on how CBDCs could speed up and lower the cost of cross-border payments.
The US Federal Reserve has also been mulling a digital dollar. In fact, legislation to establish and implement it has already been proposed in Congress.
So, in the words of the prophet Daniel: The writing is on the wall.
