Elizabeth Warren Calls for US to Create a CBDC

"I think it's time for us to move in that direction," the Democratic senator told NBC's Chuck Todd, in an interview to be aired Thursday night.

By Greg Ahlstrand

Apr 1, 2022 at 1:09 a.m. UTC

Updated Apr 1, 2022 at 8:10 p.m. UTC

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Greg Ahlstrand

Greg Ahlstrand is CoinDesk's Asia News Editor. Greg has no significant crypto holdings.

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U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) says it's time for the U.S. to create its own central bank digital currency (CBDC). Warren spoke with NBC's Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press Reports," scheduled to air at 10:30 p.m. ET on Thursday. NBCUniversal shared a partial transcript of the conversation with CoinDesk.

"So a lot that banks do wrong, if you think, 'We could improve that in a digital world,' the answer is, 'Sure you could.' But in that case, let's do a central bank digital currency," Warren told Todd. "Yes, I think it's time for us to move in that direction."
Responding to Todd's question on whether bitcoin (BTC) will face at minimum being regulated like a commodity, Warren responded, "I think it's going to end up getting regulated," using the subprime mortgage financial crisis that started in 2007 as an example of why it's needed. She didn't say what form such regulations might take.
In March Warren announced a new bill to block cryptocurrency companies from conducting business with sanctioned companies. The Digital Assets Sanctions Compliance Enhancement Act, introduced with senators Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and others, would allow the U.S. president to add non-U.S.-based crypto companies to sanctions list if they support sanctions evasion.
On whether the senator saw cryptocurrency as "this decade's real estate bubble," Warren replied, "The whole digital world has worked very much like a bubble works. What is it moved up on? It's moved up on the fact that people all tell each other that it's going to be great, just again like it was on that real estate market. How many times did people say, 'Real Estate always goes up. It never goes down?' They said it decades ago before the last real estate bubble. They said it in the 2000s, before the crash in 2008."

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