Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase stated that his goal in meeting with members of Congress and chiefs of several government agencies was to assist address lawmakers’ queries about cryptocurrency.
Chairperson Jerome Powell met with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong before the Federal Reserve said it will produce a discussion paper on a central bank digital currency.
According to Powell’s meeting calendar, which was made public on Friday, the Fed chairman met with Armstrong and former House Speaker Paul Ryan for 30 minutes on May 11.
The reason for Ryan’s appearance is unknown; he left politics in early 2019 and currently works for the private equity firm Solamere Capital.
While Powell’s itinerary did not identify the issues to be discussed, Armstrong mentioned the meeting on May 14 in a Twitter thread.
The CEO of Coinbase stated that his goal in meeting with members of Congress and chiefs of several government agencies was to assist address lawmakers’ queries about cryptocurrency and gain more regulatory certainty for the technology in the US.
Armstrong said at the time that he had expressed his views on China’s central bank digital currency, or CBDC, and that he considered it posed a “long-term threat to US reserve currency status if the US does not move rapidly to create its own.”
Powell indicated a little more than a week later that the Fed will move forward with research to adopt a CBDC.
Prior to that announcement, the Fed chair had spoken extensively on the potential consequences of publishing a CBDC in the United States, stating that “doing it right is more essential than being first.”
However, in May, he stated that a discussion paper on CBDCs and digital payments would be released this summer.
While the United States has yet to decide on a digital currency, China is continuing to test the CBDC with incentives in several regions.
100,000 people in the Shenzhen region received $31 million worth of digital yuan last month, which they were able to exchange for fiat at ATMs.
