TL;DR
- The People’s Bank of China will allow the digital yuan to accrue interest, triggering a speculative injection of $188 million into stocks tied to the e-CNY infrastructure.
- Most of the capital flowed into payments companies and hardware wallet providers such as Lakala, whose shares jumped more than 12%.
- China is reinforcing a state-controlled money system that depends on incentives and centralized oversight.
The People’s Bank of China decided to start paying interest on the digital yuan to push adoption, and the market responded with an immediate speculative bet.
Several local investors bought shares linked to CBDC infrastructure for roughly $188 million in a single session. Capital flows focused mainly on companies developing payments, wallets, and hardware associated with the e-CNY.
Nearly one third of that capital went to Lakala, a payment services provider that works with merchant acceptance solutions and physical wallets. Its shares climbed more than 12% on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and extended gains the following day. Similar moves were seen across other companies aligned with the digital yuan project, including Hengbao, Cuiwei, ST Rendong, Wuhan Tianyu, and iSoftStone, all posting double-digit gains.
China Fails to Expand Digital Yuan Usage
The trigger was the authorization to generate interest, an explicit incentive designed to compete with traditional bank deposits. Starting in January 2026, financial institutions will be able to independently manage the assets and liabilities associated with e-CNY balances, under a new official plan covering the 2026–2030 period. In practice, the China’s central bank allows banks to treat the digital yuan like another financial product, but under full state control.
China is trying to revive a project launched in 2020 that never achieved organic adoption. Despite large-scale deployment, digital yuan usage still depends on artificial incentives, pilot programs, and indirect mandates. Paying interest does not address the underlying issue: it only strengthens a centralized system that expands the state’s ability to monitor personal savings and consumption.
Expanding the Control Perimeter
The central bank claims cumulative transactions reached $2.38 trillion by the end of November, with 3.48 billion transactions processed and 230 million personal wallets opened. However, those figures coexist with a familiar reality: most users return to private platforms as soon as incentives disappear.
The dominance of physical wallets and offline solutions exposes another structural weakness. Millions of people remain unbanked or lack stable internet access, and the e-CNY seeks to absorb them through cards, wearables, and state-controlled devices. This is not genuine financial inclusion; it is an expansion of the surveillance perimeter.
The stock rally reflects a tactical trade, not a validation of the model. Interest payments may inflate valuations in the short term, but they do not resolve the implicit rejection of CBDCs: programmable, censorable money tied to political decisions
