Florida has become the first U.S. state to pass legislation prohibiting the use of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).
On Friday, Florida’s governor and prospective Republican presidential nominee, Ron DeSantis, tweeted the information. He said in a tweet that the law will bar the state from recognizing digital currencies created by central banks.
Although the Biden administration’s ambitions to create a digital dollar are targeted in DeSantis’ speech, the Florida bill applies to all CBDCs.
“The legislation I signed today makes Florida the first state in the nation to protect individuals from government surveillance in their personal finances through a CBDC,”
his tweet stated.
Politicians other than DeSantis are also opposed to centralized digital currencies.
Florida’s anti-CBDC attitude views technology as a tool of governmental monitoring, marking an expanding political divide in the country. According to this school of thought, which is common among Republican libertarians, CBDCs impair the capacity for private exchange while giving central banks an excessive amount of authority.
Republicans’ dislike of what they see as Washington’s intrusive economic policy extends farther than their opposition to controlled digital currencies. In a published tweet, DeSantis urged other Republican-led states to join his campaign against CBDCs. He specifically urged the 20-state coalition’s members to oppose environmental and social governance (ESG) and take similar action.
The group, which was announced in March, was created to oppose President Biden’s ESG agenda. DeSantis has asserted that such actions jeopardize the stability of the American economy and harm the free market.In his defense of ESG business frameworks, he denounced woke executives who put their political agenda ahead of their client’s finances.
Florida CBDC Ban Spell Doom For Bitcoin?
Whether on purpose or not, Florida’s attempts to impede the spread of CBDCs help Bitcoin and cryptocurrency evangelists. Decentralized cryptocurrencies have been proposed as a way of preserving economic autonomy by certain users ever since they were first created. In fact, current efforts to put CBDC payment mechanisms in place go against Satoshi Nakamoto’s initial plan for the cryptocurrency. Many bitcoin supporters continue to call for the disintermediation of central and private banks even today.
Thus, the introduction of CBDCs might be seen as the mainstream resuscitation of a formerly disruptive technology. CBDCs go against the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin while sometimes being constructed on the same technological foundations. In other words, they symbolize the integration of digital currencies.
