Placing a CBDC against the two things it is most often confused with settles most of the confusion. A cryptocurrency such as bitcoin has no issuer at all: nobody owes the holder anything, and the asset's supply is governed by software rather than by an institution. A stablecoin is issued by a private company that undertakes to keep the token's value pegged to a reference asset, usually the dollar, and the holder's position therefore depends on that company and on what it actually holds in reserve. A CBDC is the opposite arrangement from both: a single public issuer, an explicit liability, and no reserve question, because the central bank's liability is the reference asset. Whether a CBDC would even use a blockchain is a design question rather than part of the definition.
The United States position as of this page's review date has three parts, and the shorthand versions drop two of them.
First, no United States CBDC exists. The Federal Reserve's January 2022 discussion paper described physical Federal Reserve notes as the only form of central bank money then available to the general public, said it was not intended to advance any policy outcome, and asked more than twenty questions for public comment. That paper is the last substantial published work of its kind, and it predates the change in policy described next.
Second, Executive Order 14178 prohibits agencies, "except to the extent required by law", from undertaking any action to establish, issue or promote CBDCs within the jurisdiction of the United States or abroad, and directs that any ongoing agency plans or initiatives be immediately terminated. The order's stated rationale is that CBDCs threaten the stability of the financial system, individual privacy, and the sovereignty of the United States. Two qualifications belong with that. The prohibition yields to statute by its own terms. And an executive order binds the executive branch and can be revoked by a later President, so a CBDC is not banned or illegal in the sense a statute would make it. The order does not define "agency", does not name the Federal Reserve, and does not include the Federal Reserve in the interagency working group it creates, so whether its prohibition reaches an independent central bank is a question the order does not answer on its face.
Third, Congress has not settled it. The Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, H.R. 1919, would amend the Federal Reserve Act to bar the Board of Governors from testing, studying, developing, creating or implementing a central bank digital currency, bar the Reserve Banks from issuing one or maintaining accounts for individuals, and bar the use of one to implement monetary policy. It passed the House on July 17, 2025 by 219 to 210, and the Senate has taken no recorded action on it since. A Senate companion carrying the same short title, S. 1124, was read twice and referred to the Senate Banking Committee in March 2025 and has not moved out of committee. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, H.R. 3633, whose Senate-referred text carries the same short title within it, passed the House the same day by 294 to 134, was reported by the Senate Banking Committee with a substitute on June 1, 2026, and had a cloture motion on the motion to proceed presented in the Senate on August 8, 2026. Neither bill has been enacted. That a bill is needed at all is itself informative: the Federal Reserve's 2022 paper stated plainly that the Federal Reserve Act does not authorize direct Federal Reserve accounts for individuals, which is why the paper's own analysis assumed an intermediated model in which private firms, not the central bank, would hold the customer relationship.
