Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has renewed attacks on a centrally backed digital currency (CBDC) that could ‘monitor every single transaction.’
DeSantis announced legislation in March to ban any upcoming CBDC in the U.S.
Why the Florida Governer is Against Fed-Issued Digital Dollar
In a recent public engagement, Governor Ron DeSantis emphasized that Florida would not accept a CBDC. He argued that the state also rejected the imposition of social credit scores. He said that Floridians do not recognize a central bank digital currency that would allow the government to monitor every single transaction of its citizen.
In March, Governor DeSantis proposed amending Florida’s Uniform Commercial Code to ban using a Fed-backed CBDC explicitly. The legislation also prohibited any CBDC issued by a foreign reserve or foreign-sanctioned central bank. Meanwhile, the proposal called for other states to adopt similar prohibitions. Governor DeSantis believes a federally controlled CBDC is about surveillance and control and threatens personal economic freedom and security.
The official argued that a CBDC would diminish the role of community banks and credit unions in the financial system, shrinking market lending power. Contrarily, the governor has pushed the use of crypto to be autonomous from the government.
“I think what the danger of the digital currency is that, one, they want to make that the sole currency, they want to get rid of crypto,” he said. “They don’t like crypto because they can’t control crypto. So they want to put everything in a central bank digital currency.”
Biden Administration May Push for a CBDC
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., bidding as the next presidential candidate for the Democrats, has similar views. His criticism came after the U.S. Federal Reserve announced the launch of its FedNow Service scheduled for July. And industry started speculating if an instant payment option would follow a CBDC trial in the U.S. Kennedy argued,
“A CBDC tied to digital I.D. and social credit score will allow the government to freeze your assets or limit your spending to approved vendors if you fail to comply with arbitrary diktats, i.e. vaccine mandates.”
In support of cryptocurrency, Kennedy argued that concerns about its environmental impact are overstated and that it is being used as a pretext to suppress anything threatening elite power structures. They further pointed out that Bitcoin mining uses about the same amount of energy as video games, which are not facing a similar ban.
In February, U.S. President Joe Biden appointed Lael Brainard, an advocate for the digital dollar and the Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve, as his top economic adviser. This comes when several countries, including China, push to adopt CBDCs. Recently, BNP Paribas partnered with the Bank of China to promote China’s digital currency to its corporate clients, as per reports. Meanwhile, its neighbor India aims to increase the number of customers in its retail CBDC pilot project from 90,000 to half a million by July of this year.
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