Fed officials call for embracing crypto industry: No need to fear digital asset innovation

Source: Cailianshe

Cailianshe, August 22 (Editor Liu Rui) On Wednesday, EST, Federal Reserve Director Chris Waller said in a speech at the Jackson Hall blockchain seminar that digital asset innovation is "nothing scary", the second senior Fed official this week to praise the crypto industry.

“There is nothing to be afraid of when thinking about smart contracts, tokenization or distributed ledgers,” he said. “It’s nothing new to build new payment services with innovative technologies.”

Waller is reportedly a popular candidate for the next Fed chairman. According to a recent US media survey, among the 11 candidates currently considered by Trump's team, the possibility of his appointment as Fed Chairman is only lower than that of Kevin Hassett, director of the US National Economic Commission.

In addition, Waller has long been a supporter of the crypto industry and stablecoins.

Waller was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2020. In his speech on Wednesday, he said that some of the top innovations have been “disgraced” in the past few years because they are related to digital assets, but in fact innovations in digital assets and decentralized finance (DeFi) should not be stigmatized.

“These are just technology, what’s bad about them?” he said. “If they lead to a more useful and interesting way of doing things, we should consider it and adopt it too.”

Waller also said the Fed is looking at how to tokenize things and how to use smart contracts and distributed ledgers.

"As a central bank, we may never go this path, but there is no reason not to explore and see what will happen," he said.

Waller's speech came a day after Michelle Bowman, the Fed's vice chairman in charge of regulation, also said banks and bank regulators should treat the industry better and praised tokenization.

Waller and Bowman's speech highlighted the change in attitudes of senior Fed executives in digital assets and payment innovation, which may mean that the future US policy environment will provide more space for cryptocurrencies and related companies.

Disclaimer: The views in this article only represent the author's personal views and do not constitute investment advice of this platform. This platform does not make any guarantees for the accuracy, completeness, originality and timeliness of article information, nor is it liable for any losses caused by the use or trust in article information.