The US Senate voted 85-5 on June 22 to pass the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bipartisan housing-supply package that carries a four-year ban on the Federal Reserve issuing a central bank digital currency. The House cleared the bill, sending it to President Trump for signature.
The prohibition sits in Title XI, Section 1101 of H.R. 6644. Under the language, the Fed may not "issue or create a central bank digital currency or any digital asset that is substantially similar to a central bank digital currency directly or indirectly through a financial institution or other intermediary" until December 31, 2030. Any Fed digital dollar after that date would require fresh Congressional authorization.
Private alternatives are explicitly carved out. The text protects "dollar-denominated currency that is open, permissionless, and private," drawing a statutory line between a government-issued digital dollar and the existing stablecoin market. Issuers such as Circle (USDC) and Tether (USDT) operate in the exempted space; the bill gives them a four-year window without Fed competition.
The CBDC provision was added by the Senate Banking Committee, co-led by Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), to a housing-supply bill both parties wanted to pass. House Financial Services Chairman Rep. French Hill (R-AR) framed the bill around its primary purpose: "Housing affordability starts with supply, and this bill makes meaningful progress toward building more homes and lowering costs for American families."
The legislation codifies what the administration and Fed had each signaled publicly. Trump signed an executive order in January 2025 directing the administration to halt CBDC development. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh called a US CBDC a "bad policy choice" at his nomination hearing. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has described CBDCs as "off the table."
The result: the Fed is excluded from the dollar-on-chain market through at least December 31, 2030. Private stablecoin issuers are the statutory default for digital-dollar settlement for this Congress and the next.
