Patrick Harker believes that within the next five years the nation might develop its cryptocurrency. However, he considers that the United States will not be the only country to enter this market.

Patrick Harker, president of the Federal Reserve of Philadelphia, believes that sooner or later the United States will develop its own cryptocurrency. The representative considers “inevitable” a near future where central banks around the world begin to issue assets that are also called digital currencies.

The manager made these remarks at the Community Banking Conference in St. Louis, held on the week from September 30th to October 4th, according to Reuters. Patrick Harker noted that the United States will not be the first country to issue a national cryptocurrency, but it should begin to understand that it has to engage in that sector.

Harker estimates that, possibly within the next five years, the United States will have a cryptocurrency payment system, namely the FEDNow project. It would allow real-time transfers, which is based on the idea of ​​Bitcoin, as announced by the Federal Reserve last August.

At the moment, Harker believes that cryptocurrencies are still maturing and the US dollar will continue being the currency used as a reserve of value worldwide. For that reason, the United States may not be showing the same interest as Iran and China in owning its own crypto asset.

It should be noted that this is not the first time that Patrick Harker has talked about cryptocurrencies positively. For example, two years ago he told students at the University of Pennsylvania that the properties to record blockchains data were valuable for their ability to authenticate. However, at that time Harker seemed unconvinced with the idea of ​​cryptocurrencies themselves, a position that apparently changed.

Libra and Other Cryptocurrencies on the Table

In a matter of a few days, two government representatives of the United States have decided to reactivate the discussion on the development of cryptocurrencies in the United States. Additionally to Patrick Harker, Congressmen Jerome Powell, French Hill and Bill Foster have indicated the need to develop a cryptocurrency issued by the Central Bank.

Powell, Hill and Foster asked the Federal Reserve authorities to clarify their plans for the issuance of a digital currency. The congressmen stressed that the United States should take the lead in this sector, given that other nations have similar projects that could succeed worldwide.

In this sense, it seems that there is not only internal pressure on the issue of cryptocurrencies in the United States, but also in the rest of the world. A growing number of government representatives and companies are interested in creating payment systems based on cryptocurrencies, as Facebook has done with its cryptocurrency Libra.

The Libra project was also raised at the conference that Harker attended. Banks in the region would have formalized a complaint against this new Facebook payment system, referring to it as a threat to monetary liquidity. In this sense, it seems that the cryptocurrency ecosystem has become again a topic of conversation in the US government dome.

By Willmen Blanco

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