Jerome Powell of FED: consumers do not want cryptocurrency’s from central banks’

Jerome Powell is the president of the FED, the US Central Bank. He spoke at a forum in Switzerland, this forum was made possible in part by the Swiss Institute for International Studies.

He received questions about digital currencies from central banks and about Facebook’s stablecoin from Libra.

Nice, but we do not participate

Powell was asked whether central banks would miss out on opportunities if they did not develop a digital currency. Powell states that the Federal Reserve is following developments in digital currencies closely, but the central bank is not considering developing one itself.

Highlight: “We are following the whole question of digital currencies,” says Fed Chair Jerome Powell. “It’s not something that we are actively considering. For us, it raised significant issues that we would want to see resolved. ”Https://t.co/xpAujlCWBd pic.twitter.com/n5M5XDU5AZ

– Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) September 6, 2019

Consumers already have enough choice

Powell says that if you are considering developing a digital currency for the United States, it should be really safe. He adds that it is one thing to counterfeit paper money, but that it is of even greater order if cryptocurrency can be hacked and faked.

He also substantiates this by saying that there is hardly any demand for a digital currency and that consumers already have sufficient payment options.

Libra is not a sprint

He also discusses the cryptocurrency of Facebook de Libra. Due to the size of Facebook usage, this stablecoin can quickly become systematically important. However, Powell warns that Libra should be held to the highest regulatory and supervisory expectations. The road to implementation should therefore not be a sprint.