FOMC meeting minutes: Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell has already made it clear the central bank’s viewpoint on the need for more stimulus to support the US economy. The Federal Open Market Committee’s latest meeting notes, which will be released at 2pm EST on Wednesday, will shed some more insight into the thinking of the Fed last month. September is when the Fed changed its guidance around inflation tolerance, and investors will be watching out for any additional details there.

Crypto corner: Chinese official reveals central bank digital currency trial results

An official from the Chinese Central Bank has revealed the results of a trial of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) conducted in three Chinese cities, according to Coindesk.

Fan Yifei, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China revealed on a virtual conference call at Sibos 2020 that the CBDC had been rolled out to three cities - Shenzhen, Suzhou and Xiong’an, to test the digital yuan.

Between April and August, 113,300 consumer digital wallets and 8,859 corporate digital wallets were opened in the cities, with RMB1.1 billion ($162 million) processed across 3.1 million digital yuan transactions. The revelation makes this the largest CBDC experiment of its kind yet conducted.

The transactions were used for a variety of purposes: hospitality, government services, retail,transportation and utility payments. The transactions were all recorded via barcodes, facial recognition and tap and go payment tech. In his talk Fan Yifei noted the Central Bank’s goal to “protect fiat currency from crypto-assets and safeguard monetary sovereignty.”

The trials have extended since August to the cities of Beijing, Hong Kong and Macau, the provinces of Guangdong, Hebei and Tianjin and the Yangtze River Delta region.

All data, figures & charts are valid as of 07/10/2020.