The "Digital Dollar" project is advancing rapidly, and he is one of the active figures

The United States changed its attitude towards the research and development of digital dollars at the end of last year and began to actively explore them. Prior to this, on December 6 last year, U.S. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin stated that the Federal Reserve would not issue digital currencies in the next five years.

At the beginning of this year, Federal Reserve Governor Brainard said that the Federal Reserve is studying a wide range of issues related to the regulation and protection of digital payments and digital currencies, including the cost and potential benefits of issuing its own digital currency.

On May 28, local time in the United States, the Digital Dollar Project released a 30-page white paper detailing the potential applications of central bank digital currencies.

Among them, a key figure has been interspersed, that is Christopher Giancarlo, the former chairman of the US CFTC, who can be said to be very active and active in promoting the US digital dollar project.

Giancarlo served in 2014 and stepped down as chairman of the US CFTC in 2019. He has always held a friendly attitude towards digital currency, and believes that the enthusiasm of the new generation for virtual currency should be respected, and a sound regulatory framework should be established to protect and respect consumption.

During his tenure, under Giancarlo's supervision, the CFTC approved the first batch of bitcoin futures products to enter the field.

In this regard, he once said: "If there is no Bitcoin, there will be no distributed ledger technology."

Regarding blockchain technology, he believes that blockchain has the potential to improve economic efficiency, reduce centralized system risk, prevent fraudulent activities, and improve data quality and governance.

And he believes: "When bundled with cryptocurrencies, the goal of blockchain technology is to become a new store of value, facilitate secure payments, enable asset transfers, and power new applications."

From this, we can see that for Giancarlo, digital currency is available and desirable. In response to digital currency fraud, he has requested more resources to strengthen the supervision of cryptocurrency. It is precisely because of this that Giancarlo is called "Crypto Dad".

It is reported that just after Giancarlo stepped down as CFTC chairman in 2019, Giancarlo successively joined the Chamber of Digital Commerce as a consultant and joined the American Financial Exchange (Ameribor and Ameribor Futures) as a board member. During his time with the agency, Giancarlo called for a light-touch regulatory approach to the cryptocurrency space while testifying before Congress and winning praise from industry participants.

He has since joined Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP as a Senior Associate. Giancarlo said in the email that he plans to continue advocating for the development of a digital dollar.

In January of this year, Giancarlo started a lottery to establish a non-profit organization, the "Digital Dollar Foundation", to promote the digital dollar. Accenture will support the foundation, which will research how to convert U.S. dollars into a blockchain-based digital currency.

On February 26, US time, Giancarlo tweeted to disclose the official website of his digital dollar plan.

On March 26, the Digital Dollar Foundation unveiled an advisory board, appointing 22 individuals who will help develop the framework for creating a U.S. CBDC. New members include Sigal Mandelkar, former Treasury undersecretary for counterterrorism and financial intelligence; Tim Morrison, a former adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump; Sheila Warren, blockchain program lead at the World Economic Forum (WEF); DRW founder and CEO Don Wilson; and former CFTC Commissioner Sharon Bowen.

In addition, he has also expressed his views and attitudes towards the digital dollar on many occasions.

At the end of 2019, Giancarlo and Daniel Gorfine, who once served as the chief innovation officer of the CFTC, jointly published an article in the Wall Street Journal calling for a digital currency version of the US dollar. Giancarlo said the digital dollar would be blockchain-based and would be created and maintained by an independent non-governmental organization sanctioned by the government and run by banks and other trusted payment institutions. He also added that this solution could solve the dilemma of the devaluation of the dollar.

At the beginning of this year, Giancarlo stated at the Davos Forum in Switzerland that whether it is domestic retail users in the United States or the global economy itself, US dollar users cannot be supported by analog currencies in the digital world. The current main goal of the digital dollar is to "deploy resources" in the private sector. A digital dollar is not a derivative of fiat currency, but will be backed like fiat currency.

In March, Giancarlo claimed in an interview with Messari’s Ryan Selkis that he believed such plans by institutions like Libra and China’s digital currency highlighted such factors as “good reasons why the U.S. should prioritize dollar digitization.” ". He also added that the current financial structure was becoming increasingly outdated and the government needed to come up with a structure that would overhaul and improve the current system.

After the outbreak in the United States, Giancarlo said that the current crisis of the new crown pneumonia epidemic has highlighted the "digital dollar" use case, and the digital dollar born to get rid of the crisis may have unintended consequences. Giancarlo said the U.S. must move forward carefully and wisely, advocating pilot programs to explore the use of a digital dollar, including how it could be used in a crisis. But at the same time, Giancarlo emphasized that it is very cautious to try to launch such a large project in a crisis, and it may not be the best time to launch a digital dollar.

In May, Giancarlo told the CoinDesk Consensus conference that during his tenure as CFTC chairman, he was convinced that much of the infrastructure in U.S. financial markets was outdated. Especially like the problems exposed during the epidemic, if the government has a digital dollar, it can allocate stimulus funds more accurately, after reports that many relief checks were sent to the wrong recipients.

In an interview shortly before the release of the digital dollar white paper, Christopher himself was asked "how long will it take for the Fed to implement CBDC". Christopher's answer: "Something as complex and valuable as the (digital) dollar cannot be done overnight, it shouldn't be thrown together in a crisis. So I can't give you a date for implementation, it will take time to get things right Yes. However, now is the time to start.”

Just after the release of the digital dollar white paper, Giancarlo said that the digital dollar faces many problems, such as whether it will affect the dollar currency supply, whether it needs to comply with anti-money laundering/know your customer regulations, whether user privacy will be affected by the U.S. government and commercial use and damage, etc. He admitted that all problems need to be resolved, otherwise it will be difficult for the digital dollar to participate in more activities. Even if all the theoretical plans are fine, the digital dollar still needs to be tested in actual scenarios, and then U.S. lawmakers and policymakers need to formulate potential policies and regulations based on actual implementation results. So from this perspective, Giancarlo predicts that the process of establishing a digital dollar may take 5-10 years, but he believes that related work must start now because the digital dollar is too important.

On June 11, U.S. time, the Financial Technology Working Group of the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing on Thursday to discuss how to better provide stimulus funds in emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Ideas will be the main topic of discussion. Giancarlo said at the meeting that any "digital dollar" should function exactly like physical cash, with privacy and portability. He emphasized that these characteristics are an important part of what makes the dollar the world's standard reserve currency, and that if lawmakers do not act, the United States could lose a large part of its international influence.

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