Current Florida Governor and GOP presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis continued his campaign against central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), vowing a ban if he were elected president.

“Done, dead, not happening in this country,” said DeSantis at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa last Friday. “If I am the president, on day one, we will nix central bank digital currency.”

DeSantis has been an outspoken critic of CDBDs for allowing “government-sanctioned surveillance,” and in March signed a bill to prohibit the use of a national CBDC as money within Florida.

As for the broader subject of crypto, he’s been far more supportive, previously calling its use a question of civil liberty and describing bitcoin (BTC) as a “threat to the current regime.”

Central bank digital currencies, which are a tokenized form of a country’s fiat currency issued by the government, are becoming a growing wedge between political sides in the U.S., with the GOP, broadly speaking, not in favor, and the Democrats so far mostly silent on the subject.

CBDC Ron DeSantis Politics U.S. Regulation Central Bank Digital Currencies

Krisztian Sandor

Krisztian Sandor recently graduated from NYU's business and economic reporter program as a Fulbright fellow and worked with Reuters and Forbes previously. Originally from Budapest, Hungary, he is now based in New York. He holds BTC and ETH.