Annabelle Huang recently won a government lottery to try China’s latest economics experiment: a national digital currency.

After    1    (win) the lottery through the social media app WeChat, Ms. Huang received a digital envelope with 200 electronic Chinese yuan inside, or eCNY. To spend it, she went to a convenience store to buy some nuts and yogurt. She pulled up a QR code (二维码),    2    the store scanned for payment.

“The journey of how you pay is similar    3    that of other Chinese payment apps like Alipay and WeChat Pay,” Compared with the other two payment apps, Ms. Huang added that the new way wasn’t quite smooth.

The development of a national digital currency began in 2014, when the People’s Bank of China set up an internal group    4    (short) after Bitcoin (比特币) gained attention in the country. Over the last 12 months, more than 60 countries    5    (experiment) with national digital currencies, up from just over 40 a year    6    (early), according to the Bank for International Settlements.

    7    the Chinese government has not said if and when it will officially introduce the eCNY nationwide, several officials have mentioned having it ready for    8    (tour) visiting the 2022 Olympics in Beijing.

If the eCNY is successful, it will give the Central Bank new powers to help the economy grow. With new tools     9    (develop) to collect the real-time data to record every transaction,    10    raises privacy concerns, though.

5 . Just wanting a hamburger, Hembert Figueroa was surprised to learn the dollar bills in his pocket were no good at Dos Toros Taqueria in Manhanttan.

Figueroa, an ironworker, had to stand to the side, holding his hamburger, until a cashier helped him find another customer willing to pay for his meal with a card in exchange for cash. “I had money but I couldn’t pay,” he said.

Cash-free stores are causing a backlash among some activists who say the practice looks down upon people like Figueroa, who either lack bank accounts or rely on cash for many transactions(交易).

Supporters for banning cashless stores worry technology is moving too fast for the 6.5% of American households—8.4 million—that do not have a bank account.

Business owners who go cashless say they are following the lead of majority of customers who are abandoning cash payments. Retailers(零售商)are under pressure to satisfy customers with higher expectations for fast and convenient service, driven by companies like Amazon and Uber.

Leo Kremer, co-worker of Dos Toros, said the amount of cash transactions at his stores fell from about 50% a decade ago to 15% last year. Cash transactions made handling cash especially troublesome. Before going cashless, Dos Toros locations were robbed twice.

Financial experts who work with low-income people caution against making assumptions about the shopping preferences or buying power of those who rely on cash. Justine Zinkin, CEO of Neighborhood Trust Financial Partners, said the greater urgency in the digital time is finding ways to better include low-income people in the banking system, such as urging banks to offer no-fee starter accounts and encouraging banks to open branches in underserved areas.

6 . You may have recently heard of NFT technology, which permits digital works of art to be collected and sold for millions of dollars.

But why would people pay so much money for something they cannot even touch? And what is driving the current rise in NFTs?     1    

What is an NFT?

NFT stands for non-fungible token(非同质化代币).     2     It is based on a technology called blockchain (区块链), which is also used with digital currency systems known as cryptocurrency.

What kinds of things are NFTs?

    3     They are usually bought with electronic money. The form of digital currency mainly used with NFTs is called ether. NFTs have been used to sell sports videos, pieces of land in worlds that only exist on computers and even the first-ever tweet by Twitter's founder.

What do critics say about NFTs?

Critics note that traditional art, like a painting, can be placed on a wall and looked at.     4     They point out that even though an artist can “own” a digital piece, others can easily save a copy of the same work as a file on their computer.

What are some prices for NFTs?

In February, a 10-second video showing an image of former U. S. President Donald Trump sold on an NFT marketplace for over $6 million. The first-ever published tweet from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey recently sold for nearly $3 million.

    5    

It is too early to say if NFTs are good investments. But so far, many people have items that are worth more than what they paid for them. This is no guarantee, however, that such buyers will be able to sell their digital objects for a profit.