House Democrats Propose ‘Digital Dollar’ in Move Big For Bitcoin: Here’s Why

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11 years after Satoshi Nakamoto launched Bitcoin, some facets of the U.S. government have finally indicated that they are seriously considering the creation of a digital dollar, a move that many say could validate cryptocurrencies, especially BTC.

Digital Dollar?

According to a Bloomberg Law report released Monday, Democrats in the House of Representatives are seriously considering the creation of a system of digital wallets, in which a “digital dollar” (unfortunately not Bitcoin) would be stored. This intent was revealed in a legislative text published Monday by the House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters.

The text, or at least one related to it, was shared by Peter Van Valkenburgh, Director of Research at Bitcoin advocacy CoinCenter.

The text defined the term “digital dollar” as one of two things: 1) “a balance expressed as a dollar value consisting of digital ledger entries” and 2) “an electronic unit of value, redeemable by an eligible financial institution.”

The idea with this, of course, is that it would be much easier to enact the Hill’s proposed stimulus plan against economic disaster to give every American thousands of dollars through a digital system rather than through a physical system of, say, cheques. As Bloomberg wrote:

“Large Federal Reserve banks and other financial institutions [will need] to provide digital wallets to individuals and joint tax filers eligible for direct governmental emergency payments currently under negotiation in the historic economic relief package.”

While it isn’t clear how exactly such a system would work at scale, many in the Bitcoin space have already dubbed this a “central bank digital currency,” though have been sure not to call it a “cryptocurrency.”

Could Aid Bitcoin, Analyst Says

According to Nathaniel Whittemore, a cryptocurrency analyst, this move could help Bitcoin. He explained this theory by pointing towards a theoretical four-step process that may take place if this text becomes reality:

  1. “Introduce digital dollar to ship stimulus payments.”
  2. “Hundreds of millions of Americans get their first digital wallet.”
  3. Trillions of dollars of stimulus, assuming the crisis goes longer than expected and has more of an economic impact than expected, will lead to the debasement of the dollar.
  4. Bitcoin rises as many try to find a hedge against their devaluing dollar.

Notably, the stimulus could happen without a digital system, but a digital system available to anyone with access to the internet would likely increase the efficacy of the measures, thereby increasing the amount of money that gets created and injected into the economy.

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