Although many people are not aware, these days the winter olympics are being held in beijingan event that should be historic for the Chinese capital and that is going unnoticed by the pandemic and the radical zero Covid policy that the Chinese authorities have been following for two years.
Therefore, something that was expected to be the starting signal for un worldwide change in the form of payment is also going unnoticed.
This is the experiment that China has launched on the occasion of the Games, allowing people to pay in Beijing shops with their own cryptocurrency. In other words, for the first time in economic history, a country allows citizens to pay with their own digital currency, the so-called e-CNY, the digital Yuan.
But the experiment it did not turn out as expected and hardly anyone is paying with this cryptocurrency. Because, if a novelty does not bring an advantage to your current situation, why are you going to adopt it?
China shows that crypto does not work (for now) on the physical plane
What happened in Beijing are two things which together have made the e-CNY gala a failure. On the one hand, that the Chinese population has so adopted digital payments -through the mobile with the We Chat app, the Chinese WhatsApp, or with the Alipay app- who finds no reason (or any difference) to use the digital Yuan. In addition, many do not even know how to do it.
And, on the other hand, if foreign visitors for the Games had still been able to use it, it would have been something else, but with the total closure of China so that no one brings COVID to them again there are hardly any tourists these days in beijingso the merchandising of the Olympic Games languishes on the shelves of the capital.
China has done a big bet for your cryptocurrency, to the point that it has prohibited – as always – any financial operation with another of the more than 8,000 cryptocurrencies that exist in the world. Last year, according to the Information Office of the State Council of China, 261 million people opened digital wallets in the country with the new currency and made transactions with it worth 87.565 million yuan (about 12,000 million). euros).
That is the digital yuan has a future -the Chinese have no other option either-… but on the web plane. In the day to day of physical life it does not find accommodation at the moment because it does not differ from the most popular means of payment in the country.
In a place where the credit card is already a collector’s item, starting to pay with this currency is not an incentive, although the Communist Party is making a great propaganda and because, in addition, has advantages on current payment platforms, such as zero commissions and the elimination of intermediary entities.
But it doesn’t finish curdling, and may never do. Another proof of this is that El Salvador also allows its population to pay with Bitcoinbut the tremendous oscillation of the price of the cryptocurrency par excellence throws people back.
Therefore, perhaps we are witnessing a terrible (for some) revelation: cryptocurrencies do not work in real life. At least for now. Because if we already have easy and simple digital ways to pay, why are we going to adopt others? They must give us a very big advantage (such as some kind of savings) and at the moment, they do not.
It is still early to know what the future will be like, but the present is clear: cryptocurrencies are not ready to jump into the world. They can keep investing.