Digital Dollar Project Responds To Trump’s New CBDC Campaign Plank - Forbes

The Digital Dollar Project (DDP), a nonprofit focused on central bank digital currency (CBDC), reacted in an interview to Donald Trump’s new anti-CBDC stance. With Trump as the leading candidate to potentially clinch the Republican nomination for President, his new position provides a preview of what challenges may lay ahead for those advocating for a CBDC.

In the past, Trump has also denounced the value of BitcoinBTC in a tweet when he was President, claiming it had no value and was made out of thin air. With Ron DeSantis also being opposed to a CBDC as well as Vivek Ramaswamy, it seems clear the Republicans are anti-CBDC in this Presidential race. What’s not clear though is whether Trump will find any redeeming qualities in any digital assets and what kind of impact that may have on the crypto industry as well.

president Donald Trump speaks to supporters at a rally to support local candidates at the Mohegan Sun Arena on September 03, 2022 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Trump still denies that he lost the election against President Joe Biden and has encouraged his supporters to doubt the election process. Trump has backed Senate candidate Mehmet Oz and gubernatorial hopeful Doug Mastriano. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

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Trump is not alone when it comes to a CBDC either. Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) in the House of Representatives sponsored a bill called the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act that has already advanced out of the House Financial Services Committee to the floor. With the support of 60 Members of Congress as well as support from the American Banker’s Association (ABA), there is definitely agreement about barring the Federal Reserve from using a CBDC as a tool for monetary policy.

Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) (L) and Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE), House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) talks to reporters during a news conference following a GOP caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol on January 10, 2023 in Washington, DC. House Republicans passed their first bill of the 118th Congress on Monday night, voting along party lines to cut $71 billion from the Internal Revenue Service, which Senate Democrats said they would not take up. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

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During an interview with Jennifer Lassiter, Executive Director of the Digital Dollar Project, she stated in reaction to Trump’s new stance. Lassiter said, “The U.S. historically has led in exploration and experimentation…With a CBDC, there is nothing different here that feels more scary and hard. This is complex and difficult to think of on a global scale.” According to its website, the purpose of the DDP has been to inform policymakers as to both the advantages as well as the risks of a CBDC.

One of those risks has been privacy, which since the DDP started in January of 2020, Lassiter claims has been the main priority of the organisation. Lassiter says she shares the concern many critics of CBDC have regarding privacy and believes we are decades away from solving the issues of privacy in a digital dollar.

Dollar Project

Jennifer Lassiter

The DDP recently started exploring looking for more experts to join its Advisory Group, according to a person familiar with the matter and confirmed by Lassiter. Currently, the DDP has 62 expert advisors helping to explore all the aspects of a CBDC and what it could mean from a policy perspective, as well as working on actual pilots for a future CBDC.

As a neutral, non-partisan project, the biggest challenge of the DDP appears to be a sharp partisan divide where Republican leaders in Congress and Presidential hopefuls on the campaign trail vow to stop a CBDC at all costs. Lassiter is likely going to need all of her experts to support her, since the potential of Trump becoming the next President could put any possibility of a CBDC or digital dollar on ice … for decades as well.

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I am a former U.S. Regulator where I served with the FDIC during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in finance and capital markets, with experience in safety and soundness, compliance, and bank secrecy act examinations. I also served as a consultant and compliance examiner for the Making Home Affordable Program (HAMP) – Compliance, where the U.S. Department of the Treasury would review our reports to determine how the largest mortgage servicing companies complied with the rules of the program and provided consumers the opportunity to be considered for a 40-year low-interest mortgage based on the impacts of the GFC to their family.

While at the FDIC, I provided inputs on issues impacting the largest banks and systemic risks during the GFC such as deposit run analysis, research on synthetic collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps, compilation of the exposure of net notional derivatives in the financial system, and analysis of new programs created by the Federal Reserve Board to stabilize the economy. During this time, I became interested in the way the Government provides trust in the financial system and the various risks involved with social media’s coverage of the IndyMac bank run and what run risk looked like if individuals primarily did their banking through their personal computers or phones over the Internet.

In 2016, I entered into the blockchain industry with the Chamber of Digital Commerce as Director of Operations. I helped provide a monthly newsletter and supported various working groups in the international, federal, and state arenas for emerging technology and policy issues for cryptocurrency and blockchain. In 2017, I worked as the Policy Ambassador for ConsenSys and the Ethereum network.

After these experiences, I founded the Value Technology Foundation, a 501(c)(3) where I initially served as the CEO and also was the Chair of the Board. I am still Chairman, but also serve as the Director of Policy Innovation and Research covering the cryptocurrency industry where regulation and policy intersects with the world of digital assets and distributed ledger technology. I also do private consulting engagements for layer one distributed ledger technology protocols, digital asset technology companies, and financial institutions, with a focus on the intersection of compliance, regulation, governance and policy for digital assets offerings and guiding third-party crypto service providers on working with U.S. banks.

My undergraduate degree is from Cornell University in Government (BA, 1997) and hold an MBA with a focus on accounting at the Kogod School of Business (MBA, 2009).