US Congress to consider banning digital yuan from app stores

A group of Republican senators has introduced a bill to the US Congress that would oblige app stores to exclude the use of the digital yuan (e-CNY), as well as any apps with such functionality.

The Law to Protect Americans from Authoritarian Digital Currencies was developed by Tom Cotton, Mike Brown and Marco Rubio. The initiative aims to create barriers to "direct control" and surveillance of the financial activities of US citizens.

The term "app store" includes all "publicly available websites, software or other electronic services that distribute applications to users of computers and mobile devices."

Digital dollar supporter Senator Tom Cotton backed the bill.

“The Chinese Communist Party will use the digital yuan for control and surveillance. We cannot give China that chance […] to undermine our economy at the most basic level,” he wrote.

China has been testing the digital yuan for three years. At the end of 2021, the volume of transactions with e-CNY reached 87.57 billion yuan (~$13.68 billion), 261 million unique digital wallets were registered.

In February 2021, the Central Banks of China and the UAE joined the “bridge” project for national digital currencies launched by the regulators of Hong Kong and Thailand.

In April 2022, the People's Bank of China expanded the e-CNY testing program to 23 cities.

Recall, Senator Pat Toomey said about the threat of the digital yuan to US national security.

Deutsche Bank analysts also suggested that the use of e-CNY in foreign trade could undermine the dominance of the dollar.

Earlier, the former head of the People's Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, said that the digital yuan is intended for the public and merchants, and not to replace SWIFT or weaponize the currency.