While the proposal to distribute digital dollars was struck from the new $2.2 trillion stimulus bill designed to buoy the economy, the proposal alone could accelerate a more widespread adoption of a cryptocurrency. When Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the House Committee on Financial Services, “brought that concept [of digital currency] up on such a prominent stage, it gave it new credence, which is going to propel this concept further over time,” said Lane Martin, a partner at <a href="https://finainews.com/?s=capco">Capco</a> who focuses on banking and payments transformation at the management and tech consultant company. The digital dollar was floated as an alternative method to distribute the emergency aid funds in the government’s stimulus bill that would lower the cost of ownership, Martin explained. Check cashing businesses typically charge a fee distribute funds, but distributing digital dollars could potentially bypass that step in the process, he said. However, barriers such as customer support infrastructure and merchant acceptance of digital dollars likely played a role in cryptocurrency being struck from the Senate bill, which is now on its way to the House of Representatives for a Friday vote. “If only 30% of merchants today accept Bitcoin, which is probably the most prominent digital currency there is out there, then what are we going to do to rapidly change that optic to receive $2.2 trillion dollars on digital currency?” Martin asked. “The money is only good if you can spend it.” Additional questions remain as to where consumers should direct their questions about how and where to use digital payouts. Other concerns include fraud issues, division of dollars into smaller amounts, and how people without access to mobile phones or the internet would access digitally distributed funds. Still, the introduction of digital currencies at the federal level has poised — and may even accelerate — financial services and congressional bodies to mull these uncertainties, if the question of a Federal Reserve-backed cryptocurrency arises in the future. “The digital currency market itself is one that has largely been competing with centralized currencies in different geographies, so it’s been like one camp against another camp,” Martin said. “What this does is it brings two camps together where the central bank is also discussing using the underlying technology for these currencies to augment the distribution of that central bank’s assets. It moves two opposing forces toward each other.”
