Congress passed a four-year ban on a Federal Reserve retail digital currency inside a bipartisan housing affordability bill, putting a US digital dollar legally off the table through 2030 if President Trump signs it.
The crypto policy win came through the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, not a dedicated crypto bill. The Senate passed the measure 85–5 on June 22, and the House followed 358–32 on June 23, making it Congress’s most decisive anti-CBDC vote to date.
Trump cancelled a scheduled June 24 signing and tied action on the housing bill to the SAVE America Act, a voter-identification bill facing a Senate filibuster. "I said I'm not signing the housing bill, I want to see what happens with SAVE," Trump told reporters. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Trump has roughly 10 days to sign, veto, or let the bill become law without his signature.
The CBDC provision amends the Federal Reserve Act to bar the Board of Governors and any Federal Reserve bank from issuing or creating a central bank digital currency, or any substantially similar digital asset, directly or through intermediaries, through the end of 2030. After that window, Congress must explicitly authorize any digital dollar.
Private dollar-denominated stablecoins that are open, permissionless, and private are exempted, leaving existing issuers outside the restriction. For stablecoin issuers, Bitcoin, and dollar-denominated DeFi protocols, the bill removes a tail risk the market has priced in for years: a legal Fed digital dollar competing with private dollar rails.
The Fed has no active retail CBDC program, making the ban preemptive. Critics say the provision targets a program that does not exist, and that some House Democrats who backed the housing package may not have intended to endorse the CBDC language. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh called a US CBDC a "bad policy choice" at his nomination hearing.
The bill’s housing provisions include zoning reform, streamlined construction permits, and limits on institutional investor purchases of single-family homes. The CBDC ban rode that broader package to margins no standalone crypto bill has matched this cycle.
The opposition came from the right, not the left. All 32 House no votes were Republicans, 21 of whom had signed a March letter demanding a permanent CBDC prohibition rather than a four-year moratorium.