Ron DeSantis Promises to Ban CBDCs if Elected President
The U.S. presidential candidate in March signed a bill as Florida’s governor to prohibit the use of CBDCs within his state.
Updated Jul 19, 2023, 2:50 p.m. Published Jul 17, 2023, 4:55 p.m.
Current Florida Governor and GOP presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis continued his campaign against central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), vowing a ban if he were elected president.
“Done, dead, not happening in this country,” said DeSantis at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa last Friday. “If I am the president, on day one, we will nix central bank digital currency.”
DeSantis has been an outspoken critic of CDBDs for allowing “government-sanctioned surveillance,” and in March signed a bill to prohibit the use of a national CBDC as money within Florida.
As for the broader subject of crypto, he’s been far more supportive, previously calling its use a question of civil liberty and describing bitcoin (BTC) as a “threat to the current regime.”
Central bank digital currencies, which are a tokenized form of a country’s fiat currency issued by the government, are becoming a growing wedge between political sides in the U.S., with the GOP, broadly speaking, not in favor, and the Democrats so far mostly silent on the subject.
Read more: Florida’s DeSantis Waging Toothless Campaign Against Digital Dollars, Lawyers Say
Krisztian Sandor
Krisztian Sandor recently graduated from NYU's business and economic reporter program as a Fulbright fellow and worked with Reuters and Forbes previously. Originally from Budapest, Hungary, he is now based in New York. He holds BTC and ETH.
