This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, July 21st, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

As the Federal Reserve moles the possibility of a Central Bank digital currency,

what is the public particularly privacy

advocates and those operating within the robust crypto space now think about

it. Cato's Nick Anthony offers his thoughts. Federal agencies, whenever they are considering a piece of regulation, either they have a regulation

that is pending, it's on its way, but they want public comments so that they can perhaps tailor it.

Some agencies listen, some don't.

There are a lot of complaints about how the SEC is doing that from, well, from our own Jennifer Shelp among others discussing that, but agencies

also put out requests for just comment on an idea where there is not a specific piece of regulation that is forthcoming,

but they're considering it or they're considering doing something and they ask for comment.

In the case of a Central Bank digital currency, what has the Fed discussed in public about

what they might want to do with a central bank digital currency.

Well, I think it was just about in February,

the Federal Reserve released a report saying that it was officially marking its interest in pursuing a

Central Bank digital currency or a CBDC and it had some guidelines for it

it wanted it to be identity verifiable. They wanted to have

security systems in place. They wanted to make sure that it helped the dollar

grow and a few other features.

But it was not really anything new.

It was nothing that the Fed had not already said.

The big piece of this report, the piece that really mattered, was that it asked the public a set of questions saying,

...