As part of McKinsey’s annual Global Payments Report unveiled ahead of the SIBOS banking conference, McKinsey highlights the regulatory uncertainties that surround growing stablecoin usage and the heightened interest in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). However, it notes that the “market is far too nascent to confidently predict outcomes,” and it questioned whether the two types of digital currency would coexist or one will become dominant.
The consultants rightly contrast the trillions of dollars of transactions that have used stablecoins primarily to pay for cryptocurrency trades, versus the very early steps in CBDCs. When talking about China’s pilot digital yuan, it mentions a figure of $40 million in lottery giveaways.
However, the mention of $40 million may unintentionally leave the impression that China’s trials are even smaller than they’ve been, as the 70 million transactions processed between October 2020 and mid-June 2021 amounted to RMB 34.5 billion ($5.34bn).
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