The U.S. is pursuing a digital dollar, or Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), and made major steps towards this vision recently when the U.S. Treasury released three reports outlining policy for digital assets. The three coverage areas for the reports are the “Future of Money and Payments,” “Implications for Consumers, Investors, and Businesses,” and an “Action Plan to Address Illicit Financing Risks of Digital Assets.” In a recent article, the National Law Review dives into these new reports and below, Steve Murphy, Director of Commercial and Enterprise Payments at Mercator Advisory Group, provides his take:
As readers will know, PaymentsJournal has been following the various announcements, developments, and projects associated with a U.S. pursuit of a digital dollar or CBDC. The most recent development is the presidential executive order issued earlier this year for CBDC and crypto, and the reports that have come out from the US Treasury as a result.
The first report is primarily focused on the U.S. CBDC under development for potential rollout. A CBDC has implications for instant payments, regulations, and cross-border usage. The second report is around the crypto marketplace and various issues surrounding digital assets, with recommendations around more aggressive pursuit of unlawful activity, improved supervisory guidance and rules, along with increased public access to knowledge bases on digital assets. The third report focuses on illicit use of digital assets for things like money laundering, sanction evasion and terrorist financing.