In his testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell answered a number of questions regarding digital currencies. While stating that “a ledger where you know everybody’s payments” is not a problem in China, he believes it is not attractive for the U.S. Admitting that Facebook’s Libra project was a wake-up call to the Fed, the chairman provided a progress update of the Fed’s digital dollar.
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Public Ledger Not Attractive for the US
Jerome Powell, Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, testified before the House of Representatives’ Committee on Financial Services on Tuesday. The hearing, entitled “Monetary Policy and the State of the Economy,” was chaired by Rep. Maxine Waters.
Illinois Representative Bill Foster asked Powell a number of questions about digital currencies, including the progress of the digital dollar, citing that the Chinese claims they will be rolling out their digital yuan “sometime very quickly.”
“Do you feel you have adequate visibility into what the Chinese are doing on this. Do you have working-level contacts that give you some idea of what their rollout is likely to do, like likely to look like?” Foster asked. Powell quickly answered, “Yes, I mean, we certainly have, that.” However, he clarified that the circumstances in the U.S. are completely different from China, elaborating:
For example, the idea of having a ledger where you know everybody’s payments is not something that would be, you know, particularly attractive in the United States context. It’s not a problem for China.
Enormously Important to Keep Currency Centralized
Referencing his discussion
