A former CFTC chair says US officials are quietly studying CBDC infrastructure

Despite the Trump administration's firm public stance against a central bank digital currency, a former top US financial regulator says the groundwork is quietly being laid behind the scenes.

Timothy Massad, who chaired the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2014 to 2017, told the Digital Money Summit 2026 in London that US officials are actively studying CBDC-style infrastructure even as Washington maintains a hostile public position on the matter. Speaking to CoinDesk on the sidelines of the event, Massad said a US CBDC or government-backed dollar stablecoin is ultimately "inevitable" given global market dynamics.

Project Agora and the US Role

Central to Massad's argument is US participation in the Bank for International Settlements' Project Agora, a major public-private tokenization initiative. The project brings together seven central banks: the Bank of France (representing the Eurosystem), the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Korea, the Bank of Mexico, the Swiss National Bank, the Bank of England, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It also includes over 40 leading financial institutions, united in testing a unified programmable ledger that uses tokenized money to streamline international payments.

As of September 2025, the project had moved from the design phase to building a prototype. At its core, Project Agora seeks to integrate tokenized commercial bank deposits with tokenized central bank money, often described as wholesale central bank digital currency, within a single interoperable network.

Massad pointed to this participation as evidence that technical work is continuing regardless of political rhetoric. "The US is a participant in Project Agora," he said, stressing that work behind closed doors is continuing despite government public-facing objections, adding that the absence of public statements from a central bank president does not mean a CBDC is not being explored.

Fed Remit and Legislative Constraints

Federal Reserve payments executive Mark Gould said a digital dollar is not currently under the Fed's remit, but acknowledged that a government-backed digital dollar would fall to the Fed if introduced.

On the legislative side, an initiative to ban the Federal Reserve from issuing a digital dollar was approved in an overwhelmingly bipartisan 89-10 vote in the Senate, though it remains part of a housing bill that may still face obstacles in the House of Representatives.

Massad argued that international central banking experiments with stablecoins are quietly forcing the US to build government-endorsed settlement rails for onchain money to avoid losing ground to Europe. The comments reflect a broader tension in US digital finance strategy: official resistance to a CBDC on one hand, and continued technical participation in multilateral infrastructure efforts on the other.

Sources:
CoinDesk: Despite Trump's pledge, a CBDC is being explored behind closed doors
BIS: Project Agora, exploring tokenisation of cross-border payments
PYMNTS: Ex-CFTC Head Says Digital Dollar Is Inevitable in US