A digital dollar is now an inevitability. The only questions that remain are which countries’ citizens can first benefit from the technology, and whether government or private industry are best suited to lead the charge. https://fortune.com/2019/11/04/digital-dollar-coinbase/

This is a truly bipartisan issue: Top Fed officials, the fmr CFTC chairman and CIO, along with dem and GOP members of Congress are all discussing how the U.S. can create and run a dollar-based digital token and ledger.

But does government really need to create the digital dollar, or can the private sector can do it better? I believe the best path forward employs the skills of each actor. This means letting innovators in the private sector invent, and letting government set standards.

There’s much debate around the role of digital currency, much of it driven by conversation around Libra. But it’s worth noting that there are compromises. An example is a crypto that’s fully backed by U.S. dollars - a “stablecoin” like the one Coinbase and Circle created, USDC.

The U.S. government has a large role to play in regulating digital assets - it already plays a role in supervising stablecoin issuers to ensure they are holding the underlying dollar assets as advertised.

But there is no more need for the government to control the blockchain policy of stablecoin issuers than there is for the government to dictate the tech used by commercial banks.

The U.S. is the world's leader in technology innovation, but that leadership is provided by the private sector, not by the government. The world is moving in the direction of digital currency, and technology innovators like Coinbase are here to help.