Before taking office, US President Donald Trump fiercely opposed a government-backed central bank digital currency (CBDC) or dollar-pegged stablecoin, but global market dynamics mean this is inevitable, said Timothy Massad, the former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
In an interview with CoinDesk on Tuesday during the Digital Money Summit 2026 in London, Massad went further, saying that although the topic of CBDC is very sensitive in Washington, DC, it is being discussed behind closed doors.
Mark Gould, head of payments at the US Federal Reserve and also at the event, declined to talk about a central bank stablecoin, saying it was not a topic at present. “It’s not within our purview,” he said, but when asked whether a government-backed digital dollar would be the Fed’s responsibility, he said yes, but not at this time.
In March 2024, nine months before taking office for the second time, Trump promised to ban the creation of CBDCs. “As president, I will never authorize the creation of a central bank digital currency,” he said while campaigning. In March of this year, an initiative to prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a digital dollar was approved in a mostly bipartisan 89-10 vote in the Senate, but it remains part of a housing bill that could still hit a wall in the House of Representatives.
Massad said international central banks’ experiments with stablecoins are quietly forcing the United States to build government-approved settlement rails for on-chain money to avoid losing ground to Europe.
During the round table, the former CFTC Chairman (2014-2017) cited Project Agora, a major Bank for International Settlements (BIS), of which the United States is a member, and bringing together seven central banks, as a major catalyst.
“The United States is participating in Project Agora,” Massad said, emphasizing that the closed-door work is progressing despite objections from the Washington public.
“We don’t have a central bank president who is going to come out and talk about wholesale or retail CBDC, but that doesn’t mean we’re not looking at how to create one.”
In a conversation after the session, Massad told Coindesk that while the Trump administration will publicly state that a formal retail CBDC is not being considered, the evolution of token finance will force a government-backed alternative.
