Jake Chervinsky, head of policy at crypto advocacy group the Blockchain Association, said the United States should be careful to avoid a “totalitarian nightmare” in its potential launch of a central bank digital currency, or CBDC.
Speaking at Austin’s SXSW festival on Tuesday in a panel on ‘Financial Surveillance in a Cashless Society’, Chervinsky said though U.S. President Joe Biden had issued an executive order establishing a national strategy for cryptocurrencies in the United States, there were potential privacy concerns over the country launching a CBDC. Empowering a government to surveil its citizens using a CBDC, “sounds like the kind of thing China would do” with its digital yuan, according to the Blockchain Association policy head.