North Carolina House Passes Bill Banning State Agencies From Accepting CBDCs

The North Carolina House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban state agencies from accepting payments in central bank digital currencies.

Lawmakers passed that bill 118-0 on Wednesday.  

The bill would encompass “any institution, bureau, board, commission, officer, or political subdivision of the State.” 

Republican lawmakers Harry Warren and Mark Brody sponsored the bill.

The moves comes after other Republican lawmakers have staunchly opposed CBDCs. 

A draft of the North Carolina bill from April was originally titled “an act to prohibit payments in cryptocurrency to the state,” but has since been changed to hone in on CBDCs. 

Republicans battle CBDCs 

Republican Governor Ron DeSantis introduced a “first-in-the-nation proposal” to prohibit the use of CBDCs back in March. 

DeSantis is a potential presidential candidate is against CBDCs, but is seemingly in support of decentralized crypto. 

DeSantis said in March that “a federally controlled Central Bank Digital Currency is the most recent way the Davos elites are attempting to backdoor woke ideology like Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) into the United States financial system, threatening individual privacy and economic freedom.”

“Unlike a decentralized digital currency, a CBDC is directly controlled and issued by the government to consumers, giving government bureaucrats the ability to see all consumer activity and the power to cut off access to goods and services for consumers,” he said. 

DeSantis’ bill is intended to “protect Floridians from the Biden administration’s weaponization of the financial sector through a Central Bank Digital Currency” according to his office.

The new bill will prohibit the use of a federally issued CBDC, or a CBDC from another country, within Florida’s Uniform Commercial Code, the Governor’s office said.

The Biden Administration outlined goals to explore the potential behind a U.S. CBDC last year. 

As of March, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Undersecretary for Domestic Finance Nellie Liang said the country was “actively” analyzing whether a CBDC is needed. 

Treasury is leading an interagency CBDC working group and working with the Federal Reserve to make recommendations, Liang said.