[Slashdot] - Jared Kushner Floated the Idea of a Federal Cryptocurrency, Documents Reveal

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump's son-in-law who acted as a senior advisor during Trump's time in the White House, was apparently interested in the idea of whether the federal government should make a cryptocurrency in 2018. In an email to then-US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Kushner asked if he could have a group of people "brainstorm" about the government creating its own digital currency, as revealed by a Freedom Of Information Act request from CoinDesk. Here's the email in full: Steven -- Would you be open to me bringing a small group of people to have a brainstorm about this topic? http://blog.samaltman.com/us-digital-currency My sense is it could make sense and also be something that could ultimately change the way we pay out entitlements as well saving us a ton in waste fraud and also in transaction costs... The Verge report continues... The link [included in Kushner's email] goes to a 2018 blog post titled "US Digital Currency," which was written by Sam Altman, a former president of startup incubator Y Combinator and currently the CEO of OpenAI. The post discusses how the US should create a cryptocurrency and make it legal tender in the country. (While it suggests naming the coin USDC, for US Digital Currency, there actually is currently a stablecoin named USDC, short for US Dollar Coin, but that it wasn't created by the government.) Altman's post suggests that the US cryptocurrency could have taxes built-in and that building it could help give America "some power over a worldwide currency." For his part, Kushner suggests it could be a way to cut down on waste, fraud, and transaction costs when paying out entitlements. The outcome of his request is unclear -- the emails don't show whether Mnuchin ever responded, or if there was ever a meeting about the idea.

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