In January 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14178 prohibiting any federal agency from establishing, issuing, or promoting a central bank digital currency. The President's Working Group on Digital Asset Markets has since called on Congress to codify the ban through the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act (S.1124 / H.R.1919), and the House-passed Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (H.R.3633) includes its own CBDC prohibition. The mechanism is straightforward: a government-issued programmable dollar would have given Washington a direct consumer payment rail, potentially displacing the private on-ramp infrastructure that crypto-adjacent fintech companies spent a decade and billions building. The ban takes that threat off the table.
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