The United States Congress passed landmark legislation in June 2026 prohibiting the Federal Reserve from creating or issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) until at least December 31, 2030. The bill cleared the House of Representatives with an overwhelming bipartisan margin and passed the Senate with similarly decisive support.
The Anti-CBDC Act prohibits the Federal Reserve from issuing a retail CBDC — a digital dollar that would be held directly by individuals and businesses, bypassing the commercial banking system. The ban is in effect until December 31, 2030 at minimum. Pilot programs, research, and wholesale CBDC frameworks for interbank settlement are not covered by the prohibition.
The vote margins are striking. 358-32 in the House and 85-5 in the Senate represent rare bipartisan consensus in a divided Congress. The scale of agreement signals that CBDC opposition has become a mainstream legislative position, not a fringe concern.
The concern driving the legislation centers on surveillance and financial privacy: a retail CBDC issued by the Federal Reserve would give the government direct visibility into every dollar transaction, a capability that has no analogue in the current cash and banking system. Opponents across both parties framed the legislation as a financial freedom and civil liberties issue rather than a crypto-specific one.
With a federal retail CBDC off the table until 2031 at the earliest, the digital dollar infrastructure gap defaults to private stablecoins. The GENIUS Act — passed separately in 2026 — established the regulatory framework for payment stablecoins issued by banks and non-bank issuers under federal oversight.
The practical outcome: regulated stablecoins like USDC, RLUSD, and similar compliant instruments fill the digital payment rails role that a CBDC would have occupied. For XRPL-native stablecoins, this is a structural tailwind. RLUSD crossed $800M in supply on the XRP Ledger in June 2026, surpassing its Ethereum supply, at the same moment federal digital dollar competition was formally delayed four years.
The US CBDC ban creates a global policy divergence. The European Central Bank's digital euro project is in advanced preparation. China's e-CNY has been in pilot since 2020 and is expanding rapidly. The US choosing private stablecoin infrastructure rather than a central bank instrument reflects a fundamentally different philosophy about state versus market roles in digital payment rails.
For DLT infrastructure builders, the US anti-CBDC stance clarifies the addressable market: compliant private stablecoin networks on ledgers like XRPL, rather than government-issued CBDC rails, are where US dollar digital payment infrastructure will concentrate through at least the end of the decade.
The bill represents a significant escalation from prior Congressional activity on CBDCs. Previous efforts — including the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act introduced by Rep. Tom Emmer — passed one chamber but stalled in the other. The 2026 version achieved both chambers with margins that removed any ambiguity about Congressional intent.
Sources: Multiple X-sourced reports of vote tallies (House 358-32, Senate 85-5) from June 24, 2026, confirmed by community reporting with 120+ engagement posts; GENIUS Act legislative context (publicly available); RLUSD supply data from XRPL ledger tracking.