Former Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo says its time for the Federal Reserve to issue a fully digital currency. 

Giancarlo, who worked for the CFTC from 2014 to 2019, told Yahoo Finance’s On the Move program that the Federal Reserve must issue a digital currency in order to compete with China and their forthcoming digital yuan. 

The former CFTC chairman highlighted the prevalence of online shopping as a particular sector that would benefit from the U.S. offering a digital payment option outside of traditional debit and credit cards. 

He said, 

When we talk about a digital dollar we’re talking about in the virtual world, to have that same immediacy of payment that we have in the analog human world.

Giancarlo founded the Digital Dollar Project to draw greater interest to the U.S. central bank issuing a digital currency. The project has teamed up with Accenture to encourage dialogue between the private and public sector.

He told Yahoo, 

A digital dollar is a complete change in architecture of the dollar. It’s going to take a lot of thought. There are going to be a lot of views on this.

Featured Image Credit: Photo via Pixabay.com