China in an effort to promote it's digital currency will hand out 40 million renminbi ($6.2 million)to it's citizens in Beijing in a lottery. The digital currency, upon winning, can be spent with selected merchants.
The world’s second-largest economy has been developing the digital yuan or central bank digital currency (CBDC) since 2014 and instead of nationwide rollout is focusing on trials in the form of lotteries around the country.
The digital yuan is not a cryptocurrency like bitcoin but a CBDC or central bank digital currency. The difference between a CBDC and a cryptocurrency is that the CBDC is issued by a central bank, while a cryptocurrency is decentralised.
The development comes days after China's clampdown on cryptocurrencies.