IN the NEWS - "Red Envelopes" in U.S. Future too?

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast... 

Revelation 13:17

 

"Last week, the digital yuan got a boost when China’s biggest online retailer announced it has developed the first virtual platform to accept the Chinese digital currency.

The digital currency is nothing more than a virtual banknote or coin

that exists in a digital wallet on your smartphone instead of a billfold or a purse. The value of the digital currency is backed by the state, just like traditional fiat currency.

JD.com will accept the digital yuan as payment for some products in its online mall.

The Chinese government will give away digital yuan to citizens from Suzhou, a city near Shanghai. According to a post on the company website, the city government and the People’s Bank of China will issue 200 digital yuan “red envelopes” to 100,000 consumers selected in a “lucky lottery.”

Proponents of government digital currencies tout their convenience and security. But as Seeking Alpha pointed out, there is a more sinister reason governments are scrambling to develop their own digital fiat.

If an official digital yuan was adopted, it would give Beijing a remarkable amount of information about what consumers are spending their money on.”

The government can easily track digital payments. As Bloomberg put it in an article published when the pilot program was launched, digital currency “offers China’s authorities a degree of control never possible with physical money.” Specifically, a digital currency might allow the Chinese government to more closely monitor mobile app purchases,  accounting for about 16% of the country’s GDP. ..."China’s goal is not to make payments more convenient but to replace cash, so it can keep closer tabs on people than it already does,’ argues Aaron Brown, a crypto investor. 

It’s easy to shrug off China’s experimentation with digital currency as something going on “over there,” but US policymakers like the idea too. In fact, they have already toyed with the idea of a digital dollar. A Democratic proposal for stimulus payments in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic featured digital currency deposited into digital wallets. Some officials admitted it would potentially allow the government to control how the money was spent.

The bottom line is the tighter control governments have over money, the tighter control they have over you." ZeroHedge