As part of “Crypto Week,” the US House of Representatives just passed the “Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act” (H.R. 1919), a measure that would bar the Federal Reserve from issuing, pilot-testing or even researching a retail central-bank digital currency (CBDC) digital dollar capable of being held by the public. Speaker Mike Johnson says the vote will deliver on President Trump’s promise to make the United States “the world leader in digital assets without turning money into a surveillance tool.”
What the bill actually does
Section 2 of H.R. 1919 amends the Federal Reserve Act to prohibit any Federal Reserve bank from “offering products or services directly to an individual, maintaining an account on behalf of an individual, or issuing a central bank digital currency.” The text also blocks the Board from using a CBDC or digital dollar to conduct monetary policy, effectively freezing every pathway the Fed has explored since it published a discussion paper on a digital dollar in 2022.
The measure builds on earlier versions championed by House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who calls CBDCs “CCP-style surveillance tools waiting to be weaponised.” In a recent press release, Emmer warned that forcing Americans to hold accounts at the Fed would give government “the ability to turn off your money with the flick of a switch.”
Why privacy fears resonate on Capitol Hill
Civil-liberty groups rarely align with conservative Republicans, yet many share deep misgivings about state-issued digital money. The ACLU has argued that any digital-cash system “must be as private as physical cash, or it risks becoming the backbone of pervasive state surveillance.” ACLU commentary Fintech libertarians frame the danger in geopolitical terms: if Washington builds a transactional panopticon, Beijing’s e-CNY will become the global privacy benchmark by default—a nightmare scenario for open-internet advocates.
Emmer’s bill taps that sentiment. It doesn’t merely demand strong privacy protections; it kneecaps the concept of a retail CBDC outright. The move thrills civil-liberty purists yet alarms economists who see programmable public money as the successor to paper cash.
Critics call the ban a strategic own-goal
Opponents argue that hanging a “no research allowed” sign on the Fed’s door could cede first-mover advantage to China and the euro zone, where CBDC pilots are powering ahead. A January analysis by Reuters warned that freezing a digital dollar would “give China and Europe free rein to set global payments standards.” The Atlantic Council, whose CBDC tracker shows more than 130 jurisdictions exploring state-backed digital money, notes that China’s e-CNY has already processed US $7.3 trillion in transactions.
Brookings scholars add a domestic angle: a well-designed digital dollar could underpin 24/7 payments, crowd out high-fee intermediaries and shore up dollar dominance in an era of private stablecoins. Initiatives like Paxos’s USD G or Circle’s USDC are buying hundreds of billions of Treasuries; if Washington bans its own public alternative, it risks outsourcing monetary innovation to private issuers.
Where the Fed actually stands
Fed Chair Jerome Powell has described a US CBDC digital dollar as a project that would require “support from both the executive branch and Congress.” The central bank’s tech lab has been running small-scale pilots with MIT but has yet to propose a retail architecture or privacy model. H.R. 1919 would yank the plug on that work unless a future Congress reversed course.
Notably, the bill does not touch wholesale CBDC experiments such as the multi-bank Project Agora conducted with the Bank for International Settlements. But it blocks any path to letting ordinary Americans hold Fed IOUs in a digital wallet—a line China crossed years ago.
Behind the scenes, large US banks are split. Some fear disintermediation if the Fed offers retail accounts; others worry that ceding the field to Big Tech stablecoins could be worse.
The intertwined future of stablecoins and CBDCs
This week, lawmakers will also debate the CLARITY Act (stablecoin oversight) and the Senate-passed GENIUS Act (payments-licence portability). Speaker Johnson’s message is clear: embrace private-sector innovation but keep the state out of retail wallets. The irony is that private dollar tokens depend on public Treasuries for backing—so the dollar stays digital, just not in central-bank form.
If the anti-CBDC bill becomes law, the US may double down on regulated stablecoins while China, the EU and India push deeper into sovereign digital money. The result could be a two-tier future: private tokens for dollars, state tokens for everyone else.
The bottom line
H.R. 1919 would slam the brakes on America’s digital-dollar experiments in the name of civil liberty. Supporters see a necessary firewall against “programmable money” that tracks every purchase. Critics warn it hands strategic ground to rivals racing to set CBDC standards.
Whether the Senate tempers or torpedoes the bill, one truth is inescapable: digital forms of money are coming, either via public rails or private stablecoins. Congress must decide if privacy is best protected by banning a government token, or by designing one that out-privatees the alternatives. Right now, the House is voting for the former—risking, perhaps, a future where the rest of the world writes the rules for money 3.0.