The US Just Banned CBDCs... No Thanks To Trump

[00:00] The most consequential monetary rule in a  generation just became law and President   Trump never even signed it. On July  11th, 2026, at the stroke of midnight,   Washington permanently slammed the door on a  Federal Reserve digital dollar or central bank  

[00:16] digital currency. [music] There was no signing  ceremony. In fact, there was no signature at all.   It was buried inside a housing bill while Trump  sat on his hands over a completely unrelated   fight about voter ID. But 10 days of silence  and it became law automatically. [music] The  

[00:33] United States government just voluntarily walked  away from the single most powerful financial tool   it could ever build. But that doesn't happen so  easily. So the question is, who actually wanted  

[00:45] it dead? And why did the state just give up that  much power on purpose? In this video, we're going   to show you how a monetary law passed with no  signature, who really gained as a result, and why  

[00:57] America appears to have just disarmed itself in a  global currency war. My name is Louis, and you're   watching the Coin Bureau. Now, let's start with a  very brief lesson on the Constitution. I promise  

[01:09] I won't get too deep into the weeds here, but this  is as important as is it is strange. Under Article   1, section 7 of the Constitution, if a president  neither signs nor vetos a bill within 10 days  

[01:21] while Congress is still in session, the thing just  becomes law on its own. In the simplest terms,   silence in this scenario essentially equals a yes.  But the timeline is really quite something. The  

[01:33] Senate passed the 21st Century Road to Housing  Act 85 to5. The House passed it 358 to 32.   Then on June 24th, Trump abruptly cancelled the  signing ceremony. Speaker Mike Johnson formally  

[01:48] sent it to the White House on June 29th, starting  that 10-day clock, and Trump just let it run out.   His actual words on Truth Social were that he  would not sign the housing bill in protest because  

[02:00] the Senate couldn't pass what he called the Save  America Act. He described the housing package as,   and I quote, a yawn. The SAVE Act, for those  unfamiliar, is a voter ID bill demanding  

[02:12] documentary proof of citizenship to register  to vote. The Senate had already rejected it 48   to 50 back on June 4th. So, Trump was holding a  housing bill hostage to force through a voter ID  

[02:25] law that was already dead. Why not just veto it,  though? Because look at those margins. 85 to 5,   358 to 32. Those are veto proof numbers. A veto  would have been overridden in an afternoon, and  

[02:39] picking that fight instead of the midterms simply  wasn't worth it. As a result of all of that mess,   the most sweeping monetary decision in decades  slipped through as a side effect of a political  

[02:51] negotiation about something else entirely. So,  as you can imagine, that is precisely the kind of   thing that vanishes in the news cycle, especially  with everything else going on in the world right   now. And that's why you should join the Coin  Bureau Telegram group where we flag out stuff  

[03:06] like this the moment that it happens before the  headlines catch up. It's completely free, so just   follow the link in the description or scan the QR  code that's on the screen so that you never miss   a key bit of market moving news again. Now, right  back to it. It might not surprise you to hear that  

[03:22] this central bank digital currency or CBDC ban  didn't start life in a housing bill. It began   as a standalone piece of legislation with a very  deliberate name, the anti-CBDC Surveillance State  

[03:36] Act. It was introduced by House Majority Whip Tom  Emmer. And on July 17th, 2025, it passed the House   on its own steam. But look at how it passed. 219  to 210. A near partyline vote, scraping over the  

[03:52] finish line with 135 co-sponsors. Then it hit the  Senate and well, it died. The classic pattern,   popular enough to squeak through the House,  dead on arrival in the Senate. So, how do you  

[04:05] resurrect a controversial surveillance bill that  couldn't survive on its own? Well, you bolted   onto something that nobody dares vote against.  Enter the Road to Housing Act, a 374 page monster  

[04:18] described as the most comprehensive housing reform  in the last 30 years. 50 plus banking and housing   provisions, bipartisan fingerprints all over it,  built during a housing affordability crisis with  

[04:31] a shortage of millions of homes. It even banned  big institutional investors from hoovering up   single family homes, policy both Warren and  Trump had separately backed. In other words,   it was politically untouchable. Nobody wants  to be the lawmaker who voted against cheaper  

[04:47] homes on camera. And that's the idea. A CBDC  ban that limped through the House 219 to 210   now rode inside a vehicle that passed 85 to 5. The  surveillance ban survived by attaching itself onto  

[05:02] a bill nobody could afford to kill. Now, before we  can go any further, it's worth looking at exactly   what was banned here because CBDC gets thrown  around like everyone knows what it means. Well,  

[05:15] as previously stated, CBDC stands for central  bank digital currency. But the key word there   is central. Right now, the money in your  bank account is a liability of a private   commercial bank like Chase or Wells Fargo. A CBDC  changes that. It would be a direct liability of  

[05:33] the Federal Reserve itself. That means that  you would hold a claim on the central bank,   not on your high street bank. And that has three  big consequences. First, direct accounts. citizens  

[05:46] could theoretically hold money straight at the  Fed, bypassing commercial banks entirely. Second,   programmability. And this is the scary one. You  can code conditions directly into the money. That  

[05:59] translates to things like balances which expire  if you don't spend them or funds restricted to   certain shops or certain categories. Money with  rules hardwired in, that's pretty grim. And third,  

[06:11] traceability. A centralized ledger giving the  central bank a potential real-time view of   every single transaction that you make. Tom Emmer  called it giving the government a god's eyee view   of your financial life. CFTC chairman Mike Celig  said that a CBDC will never be introduced under  

[06:29] our administration. The new Fed chair Kevin Walsh  sworn in dismay called a retail CBDC a bad policy   choice. and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant said  it would enable a financial police state. So the  

[06:44] official justification was loud and clear. This  was about stopping a surveillance state. And that   argument resonated right across the political  spectrum. Left and right for once, agreeing  

[06:56] that programmable traceable government money is a  nightmare. Hold on to that framing though because   we're going to come back to the irony of the state  killing this in the name of freedom. But first,   let's follow the power. For all the talk of  freedom, it certainly isn't the only element  

[07:12] here. Because the people who hated a CBDC most  were the commercial banks. Consider what a direct   Fed digital dollar does to their business model.  If ordinary people can hold accounts directly at   the central bank, they don't really need Chase.  They don't need Bank of America. And that's a  

[07:29] crucial bit of detail because those bank deposits  are the raw material that banks use to make loans.   Mortgages, business loans, credit cards, all of  it is built on your deposits. If citizens start  

[07:41] moving their savings out of commercial banks and  straight into the Fed, commercial banks are well   pretty screwed. And that's with all else equal.  While times are relatively good, it would get way  

[07:53] worse in a crisis. In a bank panic, a CBDC would  offer a frictionless instant flight to safety   straight into the central bank that would trigger  bank runs faster and harder than anything that we  

[08:05] have today. So, who actually lobbied against a Fed  digital dollar? The American Bankers Association,   the Bank Policy Institute, the Independent  Community Bankers of America, the most powerful  

[08:18] banking trade groups in Washington, arguing that  a digital dollar would drain deposits from local   banks and choke off credit creation. But that's  not all. The housing bill that killed the CBDC  

[08:30] also handed the banks a stack of unrelated wins.  Section 203 raised the cap on bank public welfare   investments from 15% to 20%. It streamlined bank  exams for well-run institutions. It exempted  

[08:43] certain custodial deposits at smaller banks from  brokered deposit scrutiny. So inside one bill,   the banks got an existential threat removed  and a pile of regulatory sweeteners on top.  

[08:56] The quote surveillance state was  a nice narrative, but for banks,   protecting their business model was undoubtedly  the real reason for their opposition. But still,   when all was said and done, Washington killed  the digital dollar and any official line revolved  

[09:10] around the idea of stopping a surveillance state.  But that's a bit strange. No, a CBDC would have   been the most powerful tool any government has  ever held. Programmable money with transaction  

[09:22] level visibility on every citizen, the ability to  freeze funds, redirect them, or make them expire.   And the state just gave that up voluntarily. The  people who normally crave exactly that kind of  

[09:34] power looked at it and walked away. Strange.  But here's where it gets bigger than banks and   bigger than surveillance. Because while America  was busy killing its digital dollar, the rest   of the world was building theirs. Starting with  China. The digital one has already processed over  

[09:52] 3.48 billion retail transactions totaling roughly  2.37 trillion, over 230 million personal wallets.   This is well past the pilot stage live and running  at scale today. But the real threat is crossborder  

[10:08] platform called Mbridge linking China with Hong  Kong, Thailand, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. It has   seen $55 billion in transactions, roughly 95% of  it settled in digital one. And those transactions  

[10:22] settle in about 7 to 8 seconds versus 3 to  5 days for traditional correspondent banking   at roughly 50 to 70% lower costs. It's built  for one purpose, settling energy and commodity  

[10:34] trades while bypassing Swift and the dollar  entirely. Then we have Europe. On June 23rd,   the European Parliament's economic committee  approved the legal framework for a digital euro  

[10:46] 43 to4. The pilot is targeted for mid2027 with  first issuance possible by 2029. And the EU's   rationale is that the digital euro is a defense  against, in their words, US control of money,  

[11:01] deepening a hedge against Visa, Mastercard, and  American stable coins. Even Russia is launching   a digital ruble this September. While China runs  at scale, and Europe builds its own guard rails,   America has frozen itself out until at least  2031. The US is the only major block voluntarily  

[11:20] exiting this race. rather than negotiating its way  through it. And not everyone thinks that that's   smart. Former CFTC chair Timothy Msad warned the  ban strips away tools for sanctions enforcement,  

[11:32] crossber settlement, and financial inclusion.  He says that tokenized money is becoming   inevitable behind the scenes anyway, whatever the  political rhetoric says. So, is America protecting   individual freedom or is it unilaterally disarming  in the next phase of a currency war? Well,  

[11:50] it's time for a bit of a reality check on some  numbers. The dollar still makes up around 58% of   global reserves. The euro sits at 20%. The yuan,  well, barely 2%. And the reason for that comes  

[12:03] down to the rule of law, deep and liquid capital  markets, and free convertability. Not much to do   with any kind of digital infrastructure. China  has none of the advantages that the dollar enjoys.  

[12:16] Capital controls and shallow bond markets mean  the yuan simply can't be a global safe haven.   Even domestically, China's digital Juan  is dwarfed by Alip Pay and WeChat Pay. So,   the digital one is a payment tool, not yet a  reserve currency threat. Its real danger is  

[12:32] narrower, building alternative payment corridors  that bypass Western Rails for specific trades,   especially energy. Now, that's a considerable  risk, but it's not the dollar collapsing. So,  

[12:44] let's step back for a moment and consider all  of this. The monetary law that nobody signed,   buried inside a housing bill nobody dared oppose,  is being sold to the public as a win for freedom.  

[12:56] A law that also very conveniently protected  the commercial banks from the one thing that   could gut their business and pulled America out  of the global digital currency race just as its   rivals accelerated. You could choose to see that  as principled restraint, a government refusing to  

[13:12] establish a surveillance state. Or you could read  it as a win for entrenched business interest with   ulterior motives. In any case, the talk of freedom  gave everyone cover. The banks secured their   profit margins and the politicians got a housing  win before the midterms and nobody had to answer  

[13:28] for a monetary decision that reshapes the next 50  years because it essentially just slipped its way   through. The system just works. Well, that's  all that we have time for today. But what do   you think? Was this a case of US politicians  showing that they care about freedom? Or was  

[13:44] it all just some slick maneuvering from banks that  wanted to protect their profits? Let us know your   opinions in the comments below. And if you want  to understand the private money future this ban   just cleared the runway for, go check out our  full video on stable coins right over here.  

[14:00] Thank you all so much for watching and I'll see  you again very soon. This is Lewis signing off.