Republican Representative Warren Davidson claims that “money should not be programmable by a central authority.”
Warren Davidson, a Republican in Congress, has spoken out against central bank digital currencies and called on Congress to outlaw and penalize their creation. Congressman Davidson claimed in a tweet on July 23 that the Federal Reserve was “building the financial equivalent of the Death Star” and that CBDCs turn money into a weapon of coercion and control. He added that Congress needed to immediately outlaw then make illegal any attempts to create, develop, test, or establish a CBDC.
Davidson’s remarks were in response to a job posting for a “senior crypto architect” to work on a CBDC project by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. In response to a tweet, Davidson stated that money ought to be a reliable store of value and should not be subject to centralized control. He continued, “Permissionless peer-to-peer transactions should be made possible by sound money.”
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The Federal Reserve is building the financial equivalent of the Death Star.
— Warren Davidson 🇺🇸 (@WarrenDavidson) July 23, 2023
Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) corrupts money into a tool for coercion & control.
Congress must swiftly ban then criminalize any effort to design, build, develop, test or establish a #CBDC. pic.twitter.com/9JWiyj5H2f
The Federal Reserve has been investigating the technology for a prospective digital currency, but no decisions on its issuance have been made. The prospect of a digital U.S. dollar has sparked debate in the nation and is certain to come up frequently during the 2018 presidential election.
Davidson is not the only person who worries about a possible Fed-controlled digital dollar. Florida Governor and U.S. presidential candidate Ron DeSantis declared on July 14th that, if elected, he will “nix any central bank digital currency.” A law regulating the use of CBDCs in the state was signed by DeSantis in May.
In March, Republican Tom Emmer warned that a programmed CBDC might be “easily weaponized” as a spying device to “choke out politically unpopular activity.” Emmer has been outspoken in his opposition to state-controlled digital currency. In order to “stop efforts of unelected bureaucrats in Washington, DC from stripping Americans of their right to financial privacy,” Emmer presented the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act in February.
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