Clarity Act News: The Blockchain Association, a Washington-based cryptocurrency industry group representing more than 100 member companies, has sent a formal letter to US Senate leadership opposing the creation of a retail central bank digital currency, arguing that a government-backed digital dollar would pose a threat to institutional oversight of financial privacy and would structurally harm the private stablecoin ecosystem that Congress has spent the better part of two years trying to regulate through legislation like the GENIUS Act and the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (Clarity Act, HR 3633).
This is not just a political objection introduced at an opportune moment in the legislative calendar. It is a preemptive attempt to close the legislative door on government-issued digital dollars before the regulatory framework being built around private stablecoins inadvertently creates the conditions under which retail CBDCs become politically viable, by demonstrating, through the Senate’s inaction on a private sector alternative, that the market requires a federal solution.
1/ Today, we are sending a letter to Senate Majority Leader Thune and Senate Democratic Leader Schumer signed by 160 former national security, intelligence, and law enforcement professionals in support of the Clarity Act.https://t.co/1lSQkoaaXI pic.twitter.com/JYP8DYIccl
— Blockchain Association (@BlockchainAssn) June 2, 2026
We suspect that the Blockchain Association’s strategic calculations are precisely this: eliminating the implicit argument for a CBDC by first ensuring the success of the explicit argument for regulated private stablecoins.
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Clarity Act News: The Blockchain Association’s letter, the privacy case against retail CBDCs and why it extends beyond consumer protection
The privacy argument in the Blockchain Association’s letter is not a general concern about government overreach, but rather targets the specific architectural characteristics of a retail CBDC that would set it apart from any existing payment instrument.
The mechanism works like this: Retail central bank digital currency issued directly by the Federal Reserve and held in accounts accessible to individual consumers would, by design, record every transaction in a government-controlled ledger, making each account holder’s full financial history visible to federal agencies under whatever statutory access standard Congress eventually writes into the authorization law.
Unlike commercial bank transactions, which are subject to Fourth Amendment protections, subpoena requirements, and reporting thresholds in the Bank Secrecy Act that create at least procedural friction for government access, a retail CBDC ledger maintained by the central bank itself would eliminate that friction entirely, and the government would be both the custodian of the ledger and the entity seeking access to it.
The Blockchain Association describes this architecture as a surveillance tool, and this characterization is structurally accurate regardless of the privacy protections any initial licensing legislation might include, since such protections are subject to administrative modification and interpretation over time.
8/ Tomorrow, British Airways will also bring letter signers and members to Washington, D.C., for meetings across 18 Senate offices.
And on Thursday, we will host a virtual town hall on how the Clarity Act supports law enforcement and national security.
— Blockchain Association (@BlockchainAssn) June 2, 2026
The message arrives as the Federal Reserve itself acknowledged, in a January 2022 digital currency discussion paper, that it would not move forward with issuing any retail central bank digital currencies without clear support from the executive branch and from Congress, ideally in the form of specific authorization law.
President Biden’s Executive Order 14067 in March 2022 directed the Treasury and the Federal Reserve to produce a series of assessments, which they did, but the current political environment under the 119th Congress is materially different, and the Blockchain Association is delivering that message in that changing environment, as The White House policy on stablecoins has leaned toward private sector solutions Instead of a federally issued digital dollar.
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Neil is a professional cryptocurrency content writer with years of experience. He has written for numerous cryptocurrency websites to report breaking news, and has been hired by all kinds of cryptocurrency projects, to create content that will increase their exposure and attract more potential investors.
