Despite Trump’s pledge, a CBDC is being explored behind closed doors, says former CTFC chair

In the lead up to taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump fiercely opposed a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) or government-backed dollar-pegged stablecoin, however the global market dynamics means it is inevitable, said Timothy Massad, the former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

In an interview with CoinDesk on Tuesday during the Digital Money Summit 2026 in London, Massad went further, saying that despite the CBDC topic being highly sensitive in Washington, D.C.,it is being considered behind closed doors.

Mark Gould, chief Payments Executive at the U.S. Federal Reserve and also present at the event, refused to speak of a central bank stablecoin, saying this was not a topic at present “This is not under our remit,” he said, but when asked if a government-backed digital dollar would be the Fed’s responsibility he said yes, but not at present.

In March 2024, nine months before taking office for a second time, Trump vowed he would ban the creation of CBDC. "As your president, I will never allow the creation of a central bank digital currency,” he said while still campaigning. In March of this year, an initiative to ban the Federal Reserve from issuing a digital dollar was approved in an overwhelmingly bipartisan 89-10 vote in the Senate, but it remains part of a housing bill that may still hit a wall in the House of Representatives.

Massad said international central banking experiments with stablecoins are quietly forcing the U.S. to build government-endorsed settlement rails for onchain money to avoid losing ground to Europe.

During the panel discussion, the former CFTC chair (2014-2017) pointed to Project Agora, a major Bank for International Settlements (BIS), of which the U.S. is a member country, bringing together seven central banks, as a prime catalyst.

“The U.S. is a participant in Project Agora,” Massad said, highlighting that the work behind closed doors is moving forward despite Washington’s public-facing objections.

“We don’t have a central bank president who is going to get out there and speak about wholesale or retail CBDC, but that does not mean that we are not looking at how to create one.”

In a conversation after the session, Massad told Coindesk that while the Trump Administration will publicly say a formal retail CBDC is off the table, the evolution of tokenized finance will force a government-backed alternative.