Central Bank Digital Currency...105 days to go!
Powell squashes the possibility that the Fed will develop its own digital currency
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell asserted Tuesday that the central bank will not develop its own digital currency as long as he is in charge.
Ending several years of speculation whether the Fed would join some of its global counterparts, including China, in developing a formal cryptocurrency like bitcoin or its many peers, Powell said during a Senate hearing that the project would not go forward.
“Can I have your commitment that as long as you’re the chairman of the Federal Reserve system that we will never have a central bank digital currency?” Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, asked Powell during the chair’s semiannual testimony on monetary policy and regulation.
“Yes,” Powell responded.
“Thank you for that, I think that’s extremely important,” Moreno said. “It makes me very happy to hear you say that.”
Over the years, multiple officials have raised concerns, with most saying there was no obvious need for a CBDC and citing concerns over privacy and other issues. Powell also has stressed that creating a CBDC would have required a legislative act from Congress, something less likely with a Republican majority controlling both chambers in Washington, D.C.