Chengdu is one of the two cities in China that will distribute digital yuan to its citizens, as the country continues to run series of tests for its central bank digital yuan.
The city will give out about $8 million to winners of the lottery, while Suzhou city is set to carry out a similar test. This will be the third time the Chinese digital yuan is tested in public, which indicates that its final launch is at hand. It will also be the biggest it has distributed for the same cause since the first pilot program.
With the pace of China’s CBDC development, the country is on track to become the first-ever to rolls out a government-backed digital currency.
According to reports from local media, the trial will begin on January 27 and continue until February 26.
The first of such pilot tests for the CBDC was carried out last month, with three major regions selected for the tests. The Ministry of Commerce said the three major regions include Greater Bay Area, Yangtze River Delta, and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.