Below is a post I made on r/cryptocurrency earlier today! I was going to rewrite it however since this already has all of the links attached to it I figured I would just repost it here to help bring awareness to everyone!
Lately, there has been a ton of news and information floating around about a U.S. CBDC and different projects or pilots being rolled out. As many know in March President Biden signed an executive order that required various government agencies to work together to create a unified roadmap for cryptocurrency policy. This announcement brought renewed focus to the Federal Reserve and the possible creation of a CBDC. In the months since several projects and pilots have been announced or started, however, there is only one that actually involves the Federal Reserve/Government and this project initially started in August of 2020 and has been ongoing ever since.
There are currently two projects operating to "test" CBDC. These projects are not government affiliated and involve a company and a nonprofit partnering together. The first one emerged in April when the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation partnered with the Digital Dollar Project and launched Project Lithium. Yesterday, another one was announced with Ripple also partnering with the Digital Dollar Project to launch a technical sandbox program to further study a CBDC. What comes out of these programs and what important data they claim to gather should be taken with a grain of salt because they do not involve the very authorities who would launch a CBDC in the first place. The Federal Reserve could easily dismiss these findings.
The one project that people in the crypto/blockchain space should pay attention to is the Boston Federal Reserve's project with MIT The Hamilton Project. In February the Fed released an update on the Hamilton Project which announced the results of Phase One of the project. Phase One covered the design and sustainability of if this sort of project was launched and if it would even be better than the system that the U.S. already has in place. This release also coincided with the project moving to Phase Two. In this phase, the project will be looking at new functionality and alternative technical designs. The research topics that will be covered cast a wide range of areas and will target some critical things like offline payments and protection against denial of service attacks. While these areas are critical for the system to actually function in the crypto community research into cryptographic designs for privacy AND audibility will likely occur.
Moving forward I am sure we will continue to hear about the U.S. moving towards deploying a CBDC however with how the current system functions, with the Federal Reserve in charge, the U.S. is quite a ways away from deployment. A ton of steps will need to take place like pilot studies and evaluating the results making the necessary changes and then trying again. While other governments have looked at the possibility of building atop another built-out blockchain the U.S. is going to build its own from scratch and something like that just takes time. If and when the Fed decides to launch a CBDC even among themselves they will have to sort things out. In August one of the Federal Reserve Governors, Michelle Bowman spoke about the central bank's work. When asked about a CBDC she instead advocated for a program called FedNow instead of a CBDC. FedNow enables financial institutions of any size across America to provide safe and efficient instant payment services. According to her, this program would solve the underlying issues that have led people to call for a U.S. CBDC.
With how quickly FUD can spread I wanted to put this together since I have seen an increase in the number of articles online about the U.S. developing and deploying a CBDC. I hope this allows you to see where in the process we are and how much further we would need to get to even be able to pull this off!
Please know I am not a financial advisor and make sure you do your own research! If you enjoyed this article and would like to further support me below are a few referral links that if you used when signing up I would appreciate it! Also, follow me on Twitter @Cje95_
Robinhood
Robinhood is offering a great signup deal if you use my link here where we will both be awarded free stock. All that you have to do is sign up and connect your bank account for the award! With commission-free crypto trading and the ability to set limit orders, it is a great hybrid offering in my opinion! Not to forget the addition of wallets and the ability to send and receive crypto!
Fold App
Offers daily wheel spins to win free sats daily! If you sign up for Fold with my link here you will get 5,000 sats for free!
Unstoppable Domains
Sign up using my link here and get a free $10 credit towards your first $40+ purchase!
Coinbase
Sign up for Coinbase and earn $10 of free Bitcoin when you buy or sell $100 in crypto with my referral here!
SMiles
If you are like me and walk to work every day this app rewards your walking with Sats! So far I have earned over 6,000 sats in just a couple of months walking to work! Here is my link!
