Bitcoin Well
· 4w
Buried in the CLARITY Act markup the Senate is voting on Thursday: a line that bans the Fed from issuing CBDC directly to consumers.
That's not a small detail. That's the door to programmable central...
On the surface it sounds good that the “Fed” can’t issue a CBDC. But the federal reserve can control the amount of money in our current system even though they are not “federal” so my concern is they do something similar with issuing cbdc. So is the CLARITY-style language enough?
It may block the most obvious route:
• “Fed launches retail CBDC.”
But it may not fully block:
• a government-directed private issuer,
• a consortium structure,
• a licensed “digital reserve network,”
• or a stablecoin regime so centralized it becomes state-controlled in practice.
To stop that, lawmakers would need language that prohibits not just direct issuance, but also:
• issuance by any entity acting under federal authorization for public digital cash,
• mandatory use of approved digital dollar rails,
• government-directed retail ledger systems,
• and perhaps certain surveillance/programmability features.
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