- China’s CBDC allows transmitting money through an electronic wallet replica
- Popular local services like WeChat Pay and Alipay are now offering virtual red envelopes
- The app permits a red packet to be sent to a single recipient
To entice new users, the wallet app for China’s digital yuan central bank digital currency (CBDC) added the ability for users to transmit money in an electronic replica of traditional red envelopes.
Reportedly, the e-CNY app permits a red packet to be sent to a single recipient or a fortunate draw for a group of individuals to receive a random sum from a pool of assets. WeChat Pay and Alipay have features that are comparable.
According to South China Morning Post, the new feature was published over the weekend, one month before Chinese New Year.
In China, red packets are often used to give money as a symbol of good fortune during Chinese New Year and other events. With the rise of digital payments, popular local services like WeChat Pay and Alipay are now offering virtual red envelopes.
Users can select a packet cover that features New Year’s greetings, birthday greetings, and well wishes for a prosperous China.
In other news, there has supposedly been an increase in the number of Bitcoin owned by long-term users during the year 2022. More specifically, a recent analysis found that self-custody wallets now account for 78% of the Bitcoin supply in circulation.
Seventy-five percent of Bitcoin holders now want to keep their coins under their own control rather than trusting them to a third party, up from seventy percent in August 2020.
A Reddit thread suggests that this may be due to the frequent failure of large financial institutions or controlled exchanges like FTX and Celsius.
