US Federal Reserve Looking to Hire a Manager to Research Stablecoins and CBDCs

The U.S. Federal Reserve is looking for a manager of digital innovations who will assess the pros and cons of stablecoins and central bank digital currencies *CBDC).

• In a LinkedIn job posting, the Fed said the prime candidate would be looking into the impact of digital innovations on its “operation and oversight of financial services, and the supervisory and regulatory framework of emerging payments platforms, activities and institutions.”
• The job posting follows comments earlier in January by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell at a Princeton University event where he said the Fed would focus on “better regulatory answers” for global stablecoins.
• At the end of last year, then-President Trump’s Working Group on Financial Markets released a report that said stablecoins should meet the same regulatory standards as other aspects of the financial system.
• At the Princeton event, Powell also said the Fed wasn’t concerned with being first in the CBDC race. The chairman added that the U.S. dollar’s status as the world reserve currency already gave it a “first-mover advantage.”

Read more: Jerome Powell on CBDCs: ‘We Don’t Feel a Need to Be First’