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Ep 23: Shaping the Future of Currency: the Digital Dollar
213 Plays10 months ago
Chris Giancarlo (Chamber of Digital Commerce and former CFTC commissioner) discusses the Digital Dollar and sheds light on the role of privacy, economic liberty, and leadership in navigating the ever-changing landscape of digital innovation and its impact on global economies.
Learn more about CBDCs, stablecoins, blockchain, and more on: Owl Explains.
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Transcript
Introduction to Owl Explains Hootenanny
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello and welcome to this Owl Explains Hootenanny, our podcast series where you can wise up on blockchain and web3 as we talk to the people seeking to build a better internet. Owl Explains is powered by Avalabs, a blockchain software company and participant in the avalanche ecosystem. My name is Silvia Sanchez, project manager of Owl Explains and with that I'll hand it over to today's amazing speakers.
Guest Introduction: Christopher Giancarlo
00:00:34
Speaker
Welcome to this episode of Ali Explains. My name is Olga Andoni. I'm General Counsel of Enclave Markets, and I'm honored to have a special guest with me today, Christopher Giancarlo. He served as the 13th Chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, considered
00:00:51
Speaker
He's considered one of the most influential individuals in financial regulation. He also was a member of the U.S. Financial Stability Oversight Committee, the President's Working Order on Financial Markets, and the Executive Board of the International Organization of Securities Commission.
00:01:08
Speaker
He's also the co-founder and executive chairman of the Digital Dollar Project and serves as senior counsel of Wilkie Fair Gallagher. Chris, welcome to this episode, and thank you so much for joining
Balancing Projects & Digital Dollar Project
00:01:21
Speaker
us. The first question is, how do you have time to deal with all these projects? Thank you so much, Alta. It's really nice to be with you.
00:01:29
Speaker
Our paths have crossed so many times so it's great to have this time to have a conversation today. And you know, one of the sweetest pleasures in life is to have a lot of interesting and challenging work to do. And so all of these things you mentioned make life very sweet and interesting.
00:01:48
Speaker
to have all of these things to pay attention to. And what I'm really passionate about is how do we think about the dollar and the new world of both decentralized and centralized systems of value. So that's something we'll talk about today.
00:02:03
Speaker
And Chris, you've been doing a lot, especially since you co-founded the Digital Dollar Project. And we are all dealing right now with this shift from traditional fiat currencies to digital formats supported by blockchain technology that definitely represent a significant step toward modernizing financial systems.
Mission of the Digital Dollar Project
00:02:28
Speaker
I would like to hear a little bit more what are you working on right now? How did the whole idea behind digital dollar projects started and what is its mission?
00:02:40
Speaker
Thank you so much. The Digital Dollar Project is really a very simple idea, and that is in a world in which value is increasingly moving off of singular bank balance sheets into a world of both centralized and decentralized digital networks of value, how do we
00:03:06
Speaker
enhance the dollar in its role as a world reserve currency? How do we future-proof the dollar for this coming world? And how do we do so in a way that really preserves the values that the dollar has historically stood for, values of free markets, free trade, free enterprise, and free enterprise with a zone of privacy for people's financial transactions?
Transition to Decentralized Systems
00:03:31
Speaker
privacy and the rule of law. How do we do that in a world that is rapidly changing? The world that we grew up in, where money was either a liability of a registered bank institution or existed in cash form as a liability, or at least a full faith in credit of the US government.
00:03:51
Speaker
We're going into a world where it's going to be much more fragmented. We're going to have decentralized systems of value. We already have decentralized systems of value like Bitcoin and Ethereum that I dealt with and engaged with at the CFTC. Systems where banks are going to develop tokenized systems for their account holders.
00:04:11
Speaker
And of course, we're going to have, and we have stablecoins growing at enormous rate, dollar-based.
US Leadership in CBDC & Global Standards
00:04:17
Speaker
And then, of course, CBDC. Now, whether or not the US deploys a digital dollar or not, and the digital dollar project does not call for the deployment of a US digital dollar, certainly until much more experimentation has been done and a democratic process decides to go forward. But we do, nevertheless,
00:04:38
Speaker
concerned ourselves with what is the future of the dollar itself in this world. And there will be CBDCs. As the Atlantic Council has reported, over 100 countries are actively at work on CBDC, including some of the world's largest economies, like China and the European Union, which are moving ahead very quickly. And in moving ahead, they are developing the global standards for how CBDCs will operate. And the United States, sadly,
00:05:04
Speaker
is not playing a leadership role in that development. So we at the Digital Dollar Project really advocate for the US to play a leading role in this, to lead with the values that have made the dollar one of the world's aspirational currencies.
00:05:20
Speaker
to do so in a way that protects personal privacy, individual economic liberty, but to do so in an affirmative, active way and not leading from behind is a phrase that was used a few years ago. This is not something we can lead from behind. We need to lead from the front in making sure that the digital future of money is one that is safe for democracy.
Resistance & Regulation Challenges
00:05:44
Speaker
I fully agree with you, but it seems like, especially more and more recently, we are seeing a lot of more resistance, especially from US Federal Reserve. First of all, they announced Project Hamilton, if I'm not mistaken about the name.
00:06:02
Speaker
And I think this was a research how CBDCs might be technically designed. And I think that now we see that the hypothetical US central bank digital currency is becoming more and more controversial.
00:06:19
Speaker
For example, I think recently, during DC FinTech week, Federal Reserve Vice Chair mentioned that they have not made a decision yet about CBDCs, but he did
00:06:34
Speaker
definitely called for a stronger regulation on stablecoins. I also just recently attended Blockchain Association Summit where Congressman Emmer actually seemed like he's not only a big fan of CBDCs, but he also referred to the fact that definitely CBDCs are going to instill more governmental control.
00:07:02
Speaker
How do you think we should deal with all this resistance that we are facing about CBDCs? So first of all, let's put in context where we are at the end of 2023.
00:07:17
Speaker
We are at the tail end of a 60-year period following the end of World War II, a longer period than that, a 70-year period in which the United States, the dollar, had been dominant globally.
Caution vs Innovation in US Financial Policy
00:07:36
Speaker
In fact, I would say there's four pillars to the dollar's dominance. It's the dollar itself.
00:07:41
Speaker
It's the role of U.S. commercial banks, the dominance they play in the global economy, the dominance of the Federal Reserve, and the dollar, the dominance of U.S. market and bank regulation institutions.
00:07:57
Speaker
And it's not surprising, therefore, that our leadership in Washington, our leadership at the banks, our leadership at the central bank that grew up in that world are cautious when it comes to a new technology, an internet-based technology.
00:08:18
Speaker
that has the potential to radically transform, to radically disrupt, and if not done carefully, rapidly diminish the role of the dollar in those institutions in the coming digitally networked value of the 21st century. So one can understand their cautiousness about this.
00:08:39
Speaker
I'm sure Kodak was very cautious when the internet came as well. And caution can lead to, just as well as risky action can lead to a mistake, so can over-caution. And I think the challenge for the United States right now is to recognize that what's worked so well in the past may not work well in the future if we're not affirmatively engaging with this technology.
00:09:08
Speaker
to think that somehow the internet that has changed everything we know about social interaction and online retail and communications, information sharing is not going to change. Finance and banking and money itself is naive. Of course it is. And what we need to do is be out there in front. Now, a great deal of respect for Congressman Tom Emmer, with whom I've spent a lot of time, who has very legitimate concerns
00:09:38
Speaker
about loss of privacy in the development of central bank digital currency.
Privacy Concerns in Digital Currency
00:09:44
Speaker
And if we take China's digital currency, for example, we know that it will be used as a surveillance tool. But the United States isn't the only democracy to be concerned about that. Europe is, and Europe is setting standards for privacy. Now, they may not be perfect, which is all the more reason why we, the United States, need to be engaged in this
00:10:03
Speaker
Otherwise, the European standards at least will be the dominant standards for democracy, and they may or may not reflect our values. So the notion that the right response to privacy concerns in CBDC is to just say no to CBDC is kind of a mistake. And I say that with great respect to Tom Emmer. That just means that others are going to set the standards for privacy. And to think that somehow we can leave it to private enterprise like stablecoins,
00:10:34
Speaker
and rely on them to get privacy right, well, that hasn't worked out so well in the area of social media that have not protected our privacy. In fact, they've done everything to exploit our technology. And when government has told them what information to share and what information to censor online, private actors have been only too happy to do so, as we've learned with the Missouri versus Biden case that has now been affirmed at the Third Circuit.
00:11:03
Speaker
Fifth Circuit turns out that government was in fact infringing privacy and censoring speech online. And we need to be just as concerned when private actors handle money. So the notion that we can just say no to CBDC but say yes to private actors handling privacy is not really born out by the facts. The view we share at the Digital Dollar Project
00:11:26
Speaker
is that privacy is very much a legitimate concern and a serious concern for the world's democracies, and the way to engage with it is to engage with it. The way to make sure that privacy is protected is to infirmatively engage. Again, the notion that somehow Americans are going to avoid CBDC simply by not creating a digital dollar is a false one, because Europe is going to have a digital euro.
Future-Proofing the Dollar
00:11:53
Speaker
Britain is looking at a digital euro. China is rolling out their digital yuan, not just for domestic consumption, but for global export.
00:12:02
Speaker
It's only a matter of time before we may see a digital boulevard here in the Western Hemisphere as a white label version of China's digital yuan and one that will provide that regime with access to everybody's private information the way that the digital yuan provides China with access to private commercial activity. So the game is afoot. The past, where value was either a bank liability or a promissory note or a note,
00:12:31
Speaker
a demand note of the US government is yielding to a future of a series of both centralized and decentralized systems of value
00:12:42
Speaker
Many of them today may well be based upon the dollar, what we're seeing with stablecoins, many are dollar-based. But even in that evolution, we're still not asking the question, how do we preserve and future-proof the dollar in this coming world? And anything that references the dollar, anything that's built upon the dollar, whether it's built by private sector actors or built by the U.S. government, we need to focus on these values of privacy and economic liberty and the rule of law and interoperability.
00:13:12
Speaker
One of the things that's very concerning about this new digital future, and this is coming from someone who very much supports it, is the chance that many of these systems won't speak to one another. That's something that's not helpful for the dollars and network effect in the global world. So we need to be thinking about interoperability. We need to be thinking about financial inclusion. And yes, Congressman Emmer, we very much need to be thinking about economic privacy and financial liberty.
00:13:40
Speaker
But we can't make a simple judgment that simply because it's done by the private sector, people's liberty is going to be protected, economic liberty is going to be protected. That's too simplistic of an approach. We need to have a comprehensive view of the dollar in this new digital future, and how do we enhance the values upon which the dollar has historically been based.
00:14:02
Speaker
And Chris, those are all great points, but I think that probably would be helpful for not only our legislators and regulators, but even for the critics of CBDC. Maybe we can
00:14:19
Speaker
Explain a little bit, for example, I'm grateful that you emphasize the need for protecting privacy, and I do know that Digital Dollar Project has been working on this, but how are you thinking to integrate this from an architectural perspective? How do you think implementing protection of privacy with CBDCs in general and with your projects especially?
00:14:46
Speaker
I think that the majority of the critics think that unless the blockchain on which a CBDC is run is a public blockchain, it can be altered anytime by the feds, by the government. And what exactly can we do in order to kind of change these narratives? Yeah. Well, I've written about this quite a bit.
00:15:12
Speaker
Whenever you go from an analog to a digital system, you have an infinite variety of design choices you can make. There's absolutely no reason why a digital system of value cannot be designed, and it doesn't have to be fully public and decentralized, cannot be designed to be privacy protecting. We know whether it's zero-knowledge proofs,
00:15:41
Speaker
homomorphic encryption or other privacy-enhancing technologies that digital systems of value can be designed to protect privacy. We just need to resolve ourselves that that has to be the core conditions of any system that touches the dollar, whether it's run by the private sector in the form of stablecoins or whether it's run by the US government itself.
00:16:11
Speaker
And in fact, I think that's what policymakers should be focused on. I was quite disappointed, and I wrote an op-ed in Hill magazine, that the proposed stablecoin legislation says very little to nothing about privacy. So here we are concerned about CBDCs invading people's privacy, and yet we're about to consider and perhaps adopt stablecoin legislation that says very little.
00:16:37
Speaker
And so what we need to do and what I've written about
00:16:42
Speaker
is that I think any system of value that references the dollar, touches the dollars, must protect privacy by design and do so using open architecture. So we don't have to rely on the government to tell us that they're not invading privacy. We don't need to rely on a stablecoin operator to tell us that they're not invading our privacy. An open architecture will allow us to see for ourselves
00:17:09
Speaker
that our privacy is being protected. It is doable. We need the resolve. That's why so much of this debate is actually not a technological debate, but it's a policy debate.
00:17:19
Speaker
and the time to protect privacy in anything that references the dollar is now. And we often think about this, Alta, as in the negative sense, like, oh, my goodness, this could invade privacy. We need to protect it. The way we should be thinking about it is that if we make privacy protection an affirmative design element of anything that touches the dollar,
00:17:45
Speaker
We may succeed, therefore, in preserving the dollar as the world's reserve currency for three more generations because everything else will be invading their privacy, but anything that touches the dollar can't. And that should be our policy choice. And people who aspire to freedom around the world will aspire to hold the dollar because of the privacy that comes
CBDCs vs Stablecoins
00:18:05
Speaker
with it. So we should think about this as a competitive feature and not in such a defensive way. In fact, the conversation that
00:18:14
Speaker
that I look to have with Congressman Emery is let's turn this around and actually affirmative require that if anything you do reference the dollar, people's privacy is protected and done so in an open way that they can assess for themselves
00:18:29
Speaker
through the architecture that their privacy is protected, people will flock to that the world over, knowing that the digital yuan is a privacy-invading tool, that the digital euro has privacy only for certain dollar euro amounts, and then for larger amounts, as in the words of Augustine Carson's, one of the officials says, we'll be able to track every euro. Well, I think that's something that Americans have historically rebelled against, and rightly so.
00:18:56
Speaker
Let's get privacy right and actually position the dollar as the world's currency to have. I'm glad that you referred a little bit to stablecoins. Any other features that you think or what kind of sets apart CBDCs or why do we need a CBDC instead of not only a circle or tether? I don't know that we need a CBDC. Again, the digital dollar project
00:19:25
Speaker
doesn't advocate the deployment of a CBDC. Our view is broader than that. We view anything that references the dollar, must protect privacy, must reflect US constitutional values, must have interoperability with other dollar reference items, must enhance financial inclusion,
00:19:49
Speaker
must provide resiliency to criminal and other inappropriate penetration. We look at a broad set of criteria, but what we are focused on is the dollar's role in the digital networks of the future. And so, again, whether the US deploys a digital currency or not, there's a lot of work to be done on stablecoins, and it's not just
00:20:15
Speaker
focusing on getting the right peg, it has to do with values as well. And from what I've seen, at least the policy prescriptions in Washington don't go far enough. They're just much too reliant on the stablecoin operators to get these values right.
Surveillance in Digital Currency
00:20:32
Speaker
And I'm a great fan of stablecoins and of that innovation, but think that there's got to be a policy prescription as well.
00:20:41
Speaker
And do you have any views regarding to what extent transaction activity will be surveilled by the issuer regarding CBDCs?
00:20:51
Speaker
No more than stablecoin operators would surveil that activity. I think surveillance is the big issue in digital networks of value, whether they're dollar-based, whether they're euro-based, whether they're yuan-based, and whether they're run by the private sector or the public sector. The same concerns about economic privacy and financial liberty are going to apply in the new digital future of money.
00:21:19
Speaker
There's an argument, I know of no argument that says privacy is any better protected in a stable coin than in a CBDC.
00:21:28
Speaker
That's correct. Chris, do you have any thoughts on CBDCs losing their pegs? Do you think that, let's put the question this way, aren't the risks of CBDCs using its pegs same as a dollar bill in your opinion? Or do you think that the chances that CBDCs lose its pegs seems substantially lower probably than USDC versus USDT?
00:21:55
Speaker
I think it's the opposite. I could see in 30 years' time paper currency trading at a discount to sovereign digital currency. And why is that? Because sovereign digital currency
00:22:13
Speaker
will have all the features of ability to use in the metaverse, ability to transact 24-7, 365 instantaneously. And those old dollar bills, you still need to stuff them in a suitcase and get on an airplane if you want to move them around the world. And so I think what makes this digital future so exciting
00:22:36
Speaker
is the ability to speed, efficiency, timeliness, and the ability to engage in internet commerce, which simply isn't available with paper money. And financial inclusion, the ability to bring millions more people into the global financial system that can't access it today because they don't have sufficient credentialed identity to access bank money.
00:23:06
Speaker
And so they live in a cash world, which means they're excluded from the internet. But in a digital world, we can bring much more people into the system for transactions and digital money that don't necessarily require credentialed identity to participate.
00:23:28
Speaker
So I mean, I could see actually the reverse. I could see old fashioned paper money trading at a
US Lag in Digital Innovation
00:23:38
Speaker
disk. While it may enjoy the full faith and credit of the government, it will trade at a discount to sovereign digital currency that enjoys a full faith credit. I could also see it at some point in time.
00:23:52
Speaker
that perhaps stablecoins, even with a good peg, may still trade at a discount to sovereign CBDC because it's still the obligation of a corporate entity. It's not the obligation of a government.
00:24:10
Speaker
And we have been building so much, and those are all great features, especially when we refer to CBDC stablecoins. But I think that we're still behind, a lot behind as a country. I'm curious to hear your thoughts, Chris. How far behind the rest of the world do you think the U.S. is and what will it take for us to act? I mean, hopefully not regulation by enforcement.
00:24:37
Speaker
that that has been pretty much the course of action from our regulators so far. But what else do you think we should do as an industry? I'm grateful for the amazing work with your project, Digital Dollar Project. There are so many builders in the space. There are so many layer one protocols continuing building in this industry, but I still think that we're many steps behind.
00:25:01
Speaker
What are we missing, Chris, or what would be your advice for our regulators, or even in general as an industry? Again, I've said this before, but I just want to repeat it. I don't think the race is for the U.S. to deploy a digital dollar, a CVDC, ahead of
00:25:21
Speaker
any other major bloc. I understand the motivation for China, I understand the motivation for Europe and the 100 other countries that are working on this. I don't think the United States certainly does not need to be first. But we need to be today at the leadership table around the globe that are setting the standards
00:25:41
Speaker
for central bank digital currency, standards for interoperability, standards for financial inclusion, and most importantly, standards for privacy and economic liberty. And that's unfortunately where the United States isn't having the role of influence that it ought to have.
00:25:59
Speaker
30 years ago when the first wave of the internet came, an internet of information, it was really the United States led, other democracies were there with the United States, but they led in making sure that that internet was one that was an open architecture
00:26:16
Speaker
where information could freely flow and tyrannical governments, or closed societies at least, couldn't close off the internet to make it safe for their government messages or propaganda. Thirty years later, we're in the development of a new phase of the internet, an internet for transferring value, storing and transferring value.
00:26:42
Speaker
And unfortunately, if you look at the dozen or more pilot projects that are taking place around the world, the United States isn't at any of them. And in these pilot projects are where standards are being set. And I can tell you that China is at the table, and it wants to make sure that the global standards are one that are safe for surveillance and safe for censorship of digital money.
00:27:09
Speaker
That's fine. They've got to do what they've got to do. But sadly, the United States isn't at the same table as we were 30 years ago, making sure that, in fact, this new internet of value is one that is safe for democracy, that it is one that is safe for economic privacy, economic liberty. And that's really the missed opportunity. It's not about rolling out a CBDC. Maybe we never roll out a digital dollar. Maybe we get the policy right and our stablecoin operators
00:27:36
Speaker
based upon the dollar, serve this well. That's, I think, less of a concern. You know, we in the United States have traditionally done many things through the private sector as well as through the public sector, and most often actually through a partnership between the two. So I don't know how that plays out, but there's a big role for the private sector in this. The more important thing, though, is that our leaders need to be there
00:28:00
Speaker
in setting these global standards, setting these global standards for privacy. And that's where I've been disappointed that at least Congress, I support the stablecoin legislation, but I would have liked to have seen a stand made for privacy in that bill. And there's virtually nothing said about privacy in that bill. If we're concerned about privacy, and again, I turn to Congressman Emmer, I'd like to see his hand turn to that bill.
00:28:23
Speaker
And with the same concern about privacy he has when government operates digital currency, let's make sure that it applies when the private sector does. I will say one other thing. You know, we do have a constitution that guarantees the right to privacy in our Fourth Amendment. That should be the basis for making sure that anything that references the dollar, that people enjoy privacy.
Digital Dollar Project Initiatives
00:28:44
Speaker
And privacy is probably one of the most important issues, but it's not the only one.
00:28:48
Speaker
we need to get financial inclusion right as well. And I am concerned that some of our focus on AML and other issues could become a barrier to more inclusion. Those are important policies, but whether they should apply to every small transaction or somewhere else in the chain or whether we can find a way for
00:29:15
Speaker
people that have traditionally not enjoyed the type of credentialed identity necessary to open a bank account, we can find a way for them to transact using digital money so we make sure that we get financial inclusion right. Interoperability is going to be critically important. Again, we could see five different dollar-based stablecoins, some of them being walled gardens
00:29:38
Speaker
that if you work in one, if you use one, you can't use another. Well, I don't think that's necessarily good for the dollar either. So there's policy issues here that need to be resolved at the policymaking front, the democratic process and others that can be brought together by the private sector. And I think it's time for the United States to really
00:30:00
Speaker
bring these efforts together in a way that's true to the values that got us here. And at the end of the day, that's what we formed the Digital Dollar Project to do.
Regulating AI & Privacy Legislation
00:30:09
Speaker
And last week we had a terrific, the first-of-its-kind convening on U.S. soil of policymakers we had
00:30:16
Speaker
Almost 18 governments here. We had representatives of the White House, representatives of the Treasury, and the private sector, stablecoin operators and others gathering together for two days in Leesburg, Virginia to begin these important conversations. And we worked with the Atlantic Council to do that convening, and we look forward to doing that again in the future to bring these parties together to have these conversations.
00:30:42
Speaker
Amazing work. Considering the time, I would like to wrap up with a final question. I'd like to hear your thoughts on artificial intelligence and the risks associated with it. White House, they released the executive order, I think was at the end of October. And it does show that US government is attempting to address the risks posed by AI.
00:31:07
Speaker
The more I read this executive order, the more I think that the key challenge for artificial intelligence regulation is going to be the absence of comprehensive federal data protection and privacy legislation. But I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. You nailed it, Alta. You know, our unwillingness up till now to have a federal policy on data protection I think is really
00:31:37
Speaker
hurting us from taking a leadership role in so many areas, certainly in the area of digital currency, but also in the area of artificial intelligence. I do want to tip my hat to the White House for looking to get out in front of AI with some thoughtful
00:32:00
Speaker
Thoughtfulness with regard to policy prescriptions And not everything in the report was to my liking but that's that's the nature of things But I thought there was a lot of good thinking and the initiative itself I thought was very thoughtful in a similar way I think this administration attempted a year or so ago to get out in front of Digital currency thoughtfulness, but I think some of that
00:32:23
Speaker
has bogged down. The United States and its dominance of the world's financial system for the last seven years are going to face some real challenges in the 21st century on the technological front. It is digital networks of value, tokenization. It is artificial intelligence. And ultimately, it's going to be about quantum computing. And we really need to bring some of our best minds forward
00:32:52
Speaker
to help the political class sort their way through these.
Proactive US Engagement in Digital Innovation
00:32:58
Speaker
But I can tell you one thing that I know for certain. You can't lead from behind in these areas. We must lead from the front. In 2017, when Bitcoin first appeared on the scene at the CFTC at least,
00:33:14
Speaker
We engaged with it and created a framework for Bitcoin futures to operate in a regulated environment. And at the time we did that, we received a lot of political criticism for doing so, saying that we ought to just push it out of the regulatory environment, that somehow by bringing it into the regulatory environment, we were legitimizing it. Well, five years later, that market is deep, it's liquid, it's transparent, and it's well-regulated.
00:33:43
Speaker
I think the choice at some political risk for policymakers is not to try to push away technological innovation, but to engage with it early on in a thoughtful, intelligent, responsible way, but to engage. And I think the United States needs to engage with these new digital systems of value and not put our head in the sand. You know, 50 years ago, or probably 40 years ago, when nuclear power
00:34:12
Speaker
was being developed by countries to power their energy grids, the United States came up with a policy of just say no to nuclear power. We pushed it offshore and we allowed our economic competitors like France to perfect it. And I'm afraid some of those people that say just say no to CBDC, all they're doing is making sure that our economic competitors and adversaries like France and the EU and China
00:34:39
Speaker
are going to do a better job than perfecting this than we will, which means our values won't be the ones that will dominate, it will be other values. So we need to engage, whether it's AI, whether it's digital networks of value, we need to be at the leadership table. We can put aside for a long time the decision
00:34:57
Speaker
of whether to deploy a CVDC, but we need to be at the global table setting the standards for all digital systems of value, certainly any ones that reference the dollar. And that's where, to your point about we are behind in leading with our values.
00:35:13
Speaker
I appreciate your input, Chris. And I fully agree, we have to be leaders in the space and hopefully this podcast, I'm sure that we're gonna try our best first to send it to regulators, legislators, but I really appreciate it having you here today. It was an honor listening to your insights, very thoughtful insights. I hope to have you back for I'll explain another episode again.
Closing Remarks
00:35:38
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:35:42
Speaker
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