Before his appearance in the Senate, Jerome Powell, president of the United States Federal Reserve (FED), said that on cryptocurrencies and the digital dollar there is already a report ready and is expected to be published in the coming weeks.
A central bank digital currency (CBDC) is an important step for the US economy, especially when other countries like China already have it. Said at the time, the governor of the Federal Reserve, Lael Brainard.
Last September, the Federal Reserve announced that it would publish in detail what would be the scheme of digital payments , it was thought to give in the report of the FED of the month, but it did not happen.
Now, before the question in the Senate about it, Powell said they “didn’t get where they wanted to go” and so the report to the CBDC had been delayed.
Since 2019, the FED said that they were analyzing the costs and benefits of a digital dollar in the United States and invited the Senate to review the implications that the use of a CBDC would have. Then it was found out that what they were most concerned about was technology.
It should be noted that given the existence of a digital dollar, the relationship that is established with the “stablecoin”, which are those digital currencies whose value is anchored to the dollar.
In this sense, the Senate has circulated the idea that stablecoins issued privately and under regulations, circulate together with the digital dollar. This coexistence is feasible for the FED.
This coexistence feasibility is positive for the subsistence of other cryptocurrencies,
What happens is that because Due to the capitalization that the stablecoin market has reached, some sectors of the US government have expressed concern. It is considered that this form of cryptocurrency may represent a danger to the global economy.
In the middle of the year 2021 stablecoins reached a record capitalization of $100,000 millions of dollars. This force of capitalization of stablecoins worried Federal Reserve officials for fear that the lack of regulation would allow the existence of firms that do not have the support they claim to have. Stablecoins have been compared to gold for their value stability.
As far as an official digital currency of the US government is concerned, the idea from the beginning has been to achieve a greater financial inclusion, and this requires the use of adequate technology that can carry out large transactions per second. It is estimated that they should be more than 200,000. Therefore, the development of a digital dollar became a “high priority” project for the federal government.