- One of China’s largest banks recently launched a digital yuan wallet for a short period before disabling it.
- The bank was seemingly trying to launch the wallet quietly, but the news spread quickly, drawing attention.
- While the bank’s app says that the feature is not available yet, it signals the pending adoption of CBDC.
One of China’s major banks, the China Construction Bank (CCB) recently launched a cryptocurrency wallet for digital yuan. While the bank was rather discreet about the launch, its users have quickly discovered it, and the new feature gained massive amounts of attention. So much so, in fact, that the bank decided to remove it soon after.
Earlier today, August 29th, around noon in local time, CCB users noticed that their bank’s mobile app had a new feature — a crypto wallet for the central bank’s CBDC.
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The wallet was disabled due to overwhelming attention
It remains unknown when the bank actually launched the wallet, but anyone who attempted to search ‘digital currency’ in Chinese would have been navigated towards the digital yuan wallet. After that, users could register with their phone number and quickly activate the new feature.
The news started to spread rapidly after the feature was discovered, mostly through the media and the country’s existing crypto community. Some quick users even started making transactions by linking their CCB account with the wallet.
However, quickly after the feature became a sensation in the country, the bank, which is one of the four major state-owned banks, decided to shut it down. Anyone who attempted to search for the wallet since then would only find a message stating that the ‘function is not yet officially available to the public.’
Despite the fact that it was removed, the brief appearance of the wallet has revealed that the banks are quietly implementing it in preparation to adopt digital yuan.
New reports describe an interface, which shows that each user who managed to activate the service has received their own wallet ID. Users also had options to send and receive digital yuan by using their wallet IDs or phone numbers.
