Treasury Official Recommends Privacy Considerations For Potential CBDCs

The Treasury Department’s Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions Graham Steele talked at an installments-centered gathering in Texas about the Central Bank’s disputable FedNow system and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). 

Retail CBDC could help prevent bank runs: U.S. Fed

According to Steele, one challenge of a retail CBDC is keeping user privacy while minimizing illegal transactions. Steele claims that a retail CBDC would be directly backed by the Fed and could offer consumers a safer option during bank runs that could “destabilize private sector lending.”

He highlighted the new financial emergency and said the “admittance to non-store options beyond the financial framework might have changed the nature and speed of bank runs.”

He went on to say that the United States “has not yet determined whether it will pursue a CBDC,” but a group led by the Treasury is looking into the effects that a CBDC might have on the country.

FedNow payments system facing opposition in U.S. political fight over CBDC

According to Steele, a review of “policy objectives related to global financial leadership, national security, and privacy, illicit finance, and financial inclusion” is part of the evaluation.

Steele believes that the Fed’s FedNow instant payments system “promotes choice and competition in payments,” which he believes will encourage the “development of new payment services and features” and strengthen the payments system.

FedNow has encountered political opposition. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Ron DeSantis, both of whom are running for president, are against the system because they say it would open the way for a CBDC, which they say will give the government too much power. Michelle Bowman, governor of the Federal Reserve Board, stated in April that it was “difficult to imagine” that a CBDC could be used for anything other than “interbank and wholesale transactions.”