I must admit I have found it interesting for some time now all the talk about the US possibly launching a CBDC for one huge reason. The Federal Reserve has had a CBDC investigative program called Project Hamilton that was launched in partnership with MIT in 2016! That was years and years before we ever heard or really worried about the idea.

Once the public became more aware of the project (the Fed never hid it they just never really talked about it) people began to worry even more. Heads of the various Federal Reserve Banks were always quick to shut down the idea though and focused more on what they could learn from this. Several different heads went as far as to say that rather than create this whole new system and try to force implement it onto people why don't we just take some of the ideas and implement them?

This crazy idea led to the creation of FedNOW which speeds up the time of a bank transaction for the 3-5 days to almost instantaneous. They just took the instantaneous payment idea from crypto and the blockchain and just added it to the existing tech and it worked like a charm! This further boosted the Federal Reserve in its belief that it was not going to need to create a CBDC and finally yesterday in front of the Senate Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell FINALLY said just that.

In his words, the Federal Reserve isn't "remotely close" to issuing that and I think everyone can finally breathe a sigh of relief because Congress is not going to force them to do so as seen with numerous Republican-introduced and advanced legislation.