Digital Dollar Should Be 'Actively Explored,' Says Former CFTC Chairman

Maintaining users' privacy is a key design focus, according to Massad. "We're not China."

Jun 2, 2021 at 2:55 p.m. UTC

Updated Sep 14, 2021 at 1:05 p.m. UTC

Dec 11 - Massad CFTC — Timothy Massad, a former chairman of the CFTC

A digital dollar should be "actively explored," former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Timothy Massad told CoinDesk TV.

"I'm glad to see that the [Federal Reserve] is doing that," Massad said during CoinDesk TV's "First Mover" on Wednesday.
He added there are multiple design choices and other issues to think about in terms of maintaining users' privacy, noting, "We're not China."
Like almost all major economies, the U.S. is exploring the development of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), though for the time being all plans remain in the discussion phase.
One potential design choice is for the Fed to build a digital dollar operating platform on which private institutions can build applications, Massad suggested.
"That's attractive because innovation is always going to come more from the private sector than the government," he said.
The ex-CFTC chairman and current senior fellow at Harvard University had previously been discussing his opinion piece by Bloomberg published Tuesday about the potential dangers posed by any disruption of the value of the stablecoin tether for the wider crypto ecosystem.

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