U.S. CBDC Development Proceeds in Private Despite Trump's Public Opposition

TL;DR:

• Former CFTC director Timothy Massad stated that a U.S. CBDC is inevitable and is being privately explored despite Trump’s public opposition.
• U.S. officials participate in the BIS Project Agora, an initiative bringing together seven central banks to develop tokenized money infrastructure.
• The Senate approved with 89 votes to 10 a bill to ban the Fed from issuing a digital dollar, though the legislation is still being blocked in the House of Representatives.

Washington’s official stance on CBDCs has two faces that are becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile. Publicly, President Donald Trump promised since the campaign that he would never allow the creation of a central bank digital currency. In private, however, conversations are moving forward. That is whatTimothy Massad, former director of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, asserted during the Digital Money Summit 2026 held in London.

“We don’t have a central bank president coming out to talk about a wholesale or retail CBDC, but that doesn’t mean we’re not analyzing how to create one“, Massad stated in an interview with CoinDesk. The former official, who led the CFTC between 2014 and 2017, noted that global market dynamics make the initiative inevitable sooner rather than later, regardless of what the government officially communicates.

Mark Gould, Executive Director of Payments at the Federal Reserve, also present on the panel, declined to comment on a CBDC. “This is not within our mandate”, he stated. However, when asked whether a government-backed digital dollar would be the Fed’s responsibility, he responded affirmatively, though he clarified that it is not an active discussion at this time.

The contrast between both positions reveals the tension running through U.S. monetary policy in the face of global financial tokenization. Massad pointed to Project Agora of the Bank for International Settlements as a key catalyst: the initiative brings together seven central banks to develop on-chain settlement rails, and the United States participates as an active member. For the former official, the pressure that Europe exerts in this area is silently forcing the government to build a sovereign alternative.

A CBDC is far from being an innovation. It is an instrument of state control without precedent that would allow programming, freezing, or redirecting the money of any citizen. The fact that the discussion takes place behind closed doors, away from public scrutiny, only confirms how much the reaction of a society is feared — one that, to a large extent, already understands the risks of lacking privacy and freedom.

In March of this year, the Senate approved by an overwhelming majority of 89 votes against 10 a bill to ban the Fed from issuing a digital dollar, though the measure still must clear the House of Representatives.