Home Technology Why the US Is Snubbing CBDCs
America is betting on stablecoins while other nations favor safer digital currencies.
This article appears in the September 2026 issue of Global Finance Magazine .
CFOs and corporate treasurers face a dilemma when selecting which digital currencies to use. Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are backed by the issuing central bank’s balance sheet and the full faith and credit of the bank’s national government. At the same time, fiat-currency-denominated stablecoins are issued by private entities and are backed by a regulated basket of highly liquid assets.
Typically, CBDCs would be the least risky digital currency, but what happens when the world’s largest economy decides to back stablecoins over CBDCs?
The U.S. government is not following the wisdom of the crowd here. It is one of a handful of nations out of step with the estimated 117 countries and currency unions that have researched, developed, or deployed CBDCs, according to data from the Atlantic Council.
“I would say at the official level, they’re not showing too much enthusiasm,” said Pierre Siklos, professor of economics at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. “But in a less visible way, I think the Federal Reserve, in particular, has people who think about and study these things.”
The Trump administration and its allies in Congress have a different view. This session, the House of Representatives passed the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act , which is nearly identical to a similarly named bill it passed during its previous seating. Both would prevent the Fed from researching, developing, or issuing a CBDC to individuals, directly or indirectly.
By contrast, the world’s second- and third-largest economies by nominal GDP, the EU and China, are advancing their CBDC strategies significantly. After gaining key backing in the European Parliament in June, the European Central Bank (ECB) is closer to making the digital euro a reality. The ECB expects to issue its first digital euro in 2029, following a 12-month pilot slated to start in the second half of next year.
The e-yuan, backed by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) and issued by financial institutions, is ahead of the curve, having been used in about 3.4 billion transactions worth about $2.3 trillion in 2025, since its multiyear pilot launched in 2023 . By way of comparison, the three largest credit card processors—Visa, UnionPay, and Mastercard—processed an estimated 864 billion credit card transactions in 2025 alone. But stablecoins far surpassed them, handling an estimated $9 trillion in transactions from October 2024 to October 2025, according to the authors of the State of Crypto 2025 report , published by venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z crypto fund.
In theory, not adopting a CBDC could chip away at the U.S. dollar’s status as the global reserve currency and the preferred medium for cross-border transactions as non-dollar-denominated CBDCs gain momentum, industry watchers say.
“If there are more bilateral settlements that are occurring in domestic currencies compared to the portion of settlements taking place using the U.S. dollar,” said Odun Olowookere, research director of digital economy at the Center for International Governance and Innovation (CIGI), “then the U.S. would probably need to be worried. But for now, I do not think it has been affected much.”
According to the authors of the 2026 Global Public Investors report, published by t…