CBDC Roundup

Anonymous Digital Dollars?

The Electronic Currency and Secure Hardware Act (ECASH) has been introduced in the US Congress by Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat and chair of the House Task Force on Financial Technology.

The bill directs the US Treasury Department to conduct a pilot program for a version of digital dollars that work just like cash in that they would be stored on hardware, not in bank accounts. These digital dollars would work without an internet connection and would have all the anonymity of cash.

The original vision for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin was that the distributed ledger technology and accounts tied to cryptographic wallet addresses would keep transactions anonymous. In reality, storing transactions on public databases allowed law enforcement agencies to connect those transactions and wallets to the people making and owning them.