Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.

The breakdown is sponsored by nexo.io and produced and distributed by CoinDes.

What's going on, guys?

It is Wednesday, June 2nd, and I'm not going to lie, it's a little bit slow out there.

Maybe it's everyone getting together down in Miami or just enjoying the nice weather, but either way, the news is a little few and far between. I suppose after the last couple weeks, I should be

thankful. But today what we're going to do is talk about a theme which I see rising, why I think

ransomware is the next big fud of this Bitcoin cycle. But before we do that, let's do a quick

brief. First on the brief, China continues to live test their digital yuan. Each trial, they increase the size and scope a little bit, and the forthcoming is no

different.

Announced yesterday, the Beijing Local Financial Supervision and Administration Bureau will

be giving away 200,000 red envelopes, each containing 200 digital yuan to local citizens.

That's about $31 per resident for a total trial size of

40 million yuan or 6.3 million U.S. To use it, residents have to download apps from the Bank of

China or the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. This is the second trial in Beijing this year.

The first was 10 million yuan, so this quadruples the size. In total, China has now

conducted 10 digital yuan lottery campaigns across five cities going back to October of last year.

A total of 230 million digital yuan, about 36 million U.S. has been given away.

Now, a month or so ago, we got reports from some Chinese citizens that these early tests

weren't particularly impressive, particularly in light of sophisticated mobile money like

AliPay and WeChat pay that they already used, so we'll have to wait and see if things

have changed. In the U.S., meanwhile, the discussion of digital dollars continues, albeit at a

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