Christopher Giancarlo, the former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) believes it’s time for the Federal Reserve to issue a digital currency.
Giancarlo told Yahoo Finance’s On the Move program that the Federal Reserve must issue a digital currency in order to compete with China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC). He said that with the prevalence of online shopping, the U.S. should offer some digital payment option that isn’t a debit or credit card which in turn would shrink transaction fees involved.
Giancarlo believes that a digital dollar is agnostic to other initiatives in the cryptocurrency space like Bitcoin and projects like Facebook’s Libra. He mentioned that they have have their own “value propositions” and could co-exist with a central bank issued digital currency (CBDC).
“I think the market is always better when there is a lot of competition out there… An instrument like Bitcoin may serve to the equivalent to the digital dollar might be equivalent to the digital gold.”
As more participants continue to come to the market it will be interesting to observe the growth of the overall sector and digital assets as a whole.
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