China's Digital Yuan and Asia's Crypto Moves: What's Happening?

China is shaking things up with its digital yuan, adding interest to red envelopes for the Lunar New Year. This move is part of a bigger plan to boost spending and encourage people to use the digital currency more. The digital yuan is now treated like a bank deposit, which means users can earn interest on their balances. However, it's still only used within China and can't be freely transferred across borders. Meanwhile, in the US, big crypto companies like Coinbase are pulling out of a market structure bill because they disagree with the rules around stablecoin interest. Banks want to ban interest on stablecoins, but the crypto industry argues that this would make them less competitive compared to other digital currencies like the digital yuan.Over in South Korea, major companies are jumping into the crypto world. Toss, a big fintech platform, is looking to buy an overseas crypto exchange. Other companies like Mirae Asset and Naver Financial are also making moves to acquire crypto exchanges. This trend isn't just in South Korea; Japan's SBI Holdings is planning to buy a majority stake in Singapore-based Coinhako. China is also making big plans for its energy market. By 2030, the country wants to have a unified national electricity market where most power consumption is traded. They plan to use blockchain technology to track green energy use and support carbon accounting. This shows that China is still invested in blockchain, even though it has cracked down on cryptocurrencies.