Christopher Giancarlo – the ex-chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) – believed that the time has come for the Federal Reserve to create a digital dollar. 

Specifically, Giancarlo believed that the issuance of a fully digital currency would be the adequate response to the central bank digital currency (CBDC) China is reportedly developing. 

The CFTC ex-chairman clarified that should digital payment authorized as a viable solution for US-based transactions, the online shopping sector would gain the most advantage, since all intermediary fees that come with the traditional debit and credit cards will be canceled out.

“When we talk about a digital dollar we’re talking about in the virtual world, to have that same immediacy of payment that we have in the analog human world.” 

Giancarlo further expressed that a digital dollar possessed an “agnostic” nature to numerous projects in the crypto sector. Specifically, he clarified that Bitcoin and innovations such as Facebook’s Libra come with its own “value propositions”, and has room for co-existence with a CBDC. 

“I think the market is always better when there is a lot of competition out there… An instrument like Bitcoin may serve to the equivalent to the digital dollar might be equivalent to the digital gold.”

“It’s going to change things dramatically and our laws need to evolve with that as they’ve done over the 90 years, now they need to evolve again.” Giancarlo lastly called for an update in the existing U.S. regulatory framework, to keep up with the changes brought upon the financial institutions by digital coins.