Yuval Rooz, Co-Founder and CEO of Digital Asset, spoke before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology and Inclusion's hearing today about the Digital Dollar Dilemma: The Implications of a Central Bank Digital Currency and Private Sector Alternatives.

During his testimony on September 14th,  Rooz stressed how the global financial competitiveness of the United States — including the dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency — is at stake if we do not modernize our financial infrastructure and ensure that any development of a digitally-represented dollar is done within a proper policy framework.

• Protecting the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency is a critical national security issue that demands innovation led by the private sector, but supported by a strong partnership with the public sector.

• Leveraging blockchain technology to modernize financial infrastructure is crucial for protecting the United States’ global financial competitiveness. It is the rails on which digital value will be transferred.

• As Digital Asset’s successful client deployments demonstrate, blockchain technology — when built around configurable privacy — can provide the financial system with increased efficiency and reduced risk by eliminating the need for maintaining multiple copies of the same information, which is the case with today’s payment systems.

Rooz closed his remarks by urging the Subcommittee to keep Americans’ privacy rights front of mind in digital dollar policy discussions saying: 

“Congress should ensure that any digitally-represented dollar, whether a stablecoin or a central bank digital currency, lives within our Constitutional framework — Americans using this digitally-represented dollar should have the assurance that their privacy rights are protected under our Fourth Amendment framework. I also urge Congress to work closely with the private sector, and leverage technologies already built and proven, to serve as the rails for any digitally-represented dollar. Any solution that ignores private sector innovation risks technological stagnation and will undermine our global competitiveness.”

Click here to read a full copy of the testimony.