The U.S. has once again removed the CBDC ban from the annual defense authorization bill (NDAA).
For the cryptocurrency industry, this sends a particularly clear signal:
The U.S. version of CBDC will not be implemented in the short term; political disputes are likely to continue for a long time.
By the way,
CBDC stands for Central Bank Digital Currency, a digital dollar issued by the state, highly regulated and can be frozen, which is completely different from USDC/USDT.
Many U.S. lawmakers are concerned that it will become a super surveillance tool, so they have always opposed it.
The point of contention this time is:
Originally, hardliners in the Republican Party were pushing to include provisions in the military spending bill to prohibit the Federal Reserve from researching/testing/issuing CBDC,
but at the last moment, it was removed, causing several lawmakers to angrily say that the commitment was broken.
The significance of not writing a ban in the NDAA is:
The Federal Reserve can theoretically still study CBDC in the future,
but it cannot be truly advanced because the party is embroiled in disputes.
The technology is fine, but politics simply won't allow it to proceed.
For the cryptocurrency industry, this is actually a positive:
There will be no state-issued stablecoin to squeeze USDC and USDT,
regulation will not be further strengthened for on-chain monitoring just because CBDC exists.
The entire stablecoin landscape will be more stable in the short term.
So, for us ordinary cryptocurrency users:
We don't have to worry in the short term about the landscape of stablecoins and on-chain dollars being interrupted by central bank digital currencies.
Instead, the pressure should be on these few private issuers and their regulatory frameworks, rather than CBDC itself.
