From October 8th to 18th, 2020, Luohu District, Shenzhen, China, conducted a digital currency experiment, issuing digital currency red envelopes totaling 10 million RMB (approximately 1.5 million Dollars). From the 8th to the 11th October, 1,913,800 Shenzhen residents reserved a lottery for red envelopes, and 50,000 of them received digital RMB red envelopes, each at 200 yuan (about 30$). A bank from the four major banks (ICBC, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank) should be chosen as the bank to receive the red envelope. Different banks have different colors of digital RMB.

After downloading the “Digital RMB App”, the digital currency in the red envelope can be spent no threshold at 3,389 merchants in Luohu District, Shenzhen, within seven days from the 12th to the 18th October. Red envelopes can only be consumed, and cannot be transferred or exchanged. The red envelopes that have not been used before 24:00 on October 18 will be retaken by the digital RMB system.

Since 2014, the digital currency technology has been developed, internally tested, and improved in the central bank of China. This digital currency red envelope experiment is the first large-scale contact between the central bank’s digital currency and ordinary citizens and merchants. It is supposed to collect data for further large-scale implementation.

This is a landmark, marking the official landing of the central bank’s digital currency, and 2020 officially becomes the first year of digital currency. The essence of currency is credit. Credit is the foundation of human exchange, division of labor, and technological progress. Human beings have gone through the era of commodity credit and national credit, and will enter the era of technological credit in 2020.