In his closed-door meeting on Tuesday with Democrats from the House Financial Services Committee, he's reported to have said that he's glad that negotiations are "close" on stablecoin legislation, according to Politico, citing a person who was there.

He also said Congress' approval would be required for any central bank digital currency before the Fed will move on it.

"If we’re going to have a CBDC, Congress needs to authorize it," he said, according to the report. "We aren’t advocates, but we haven’t made a decision to recommend a CBDC to Congress."

Those comments are in line with what he and other Fed officials have previously said publicly.

Democrats House US Jerome Powell

Sheldon Reback

Sheldon Reback is CoinDesk's European news editor. Before joining the company, he spent 26 years as an editor at Bloomberg News, where he worked on beats as diverse as stock markets and the retail industry as well as covering the dot-com bubble of 2000-2002. He subsequently managed the Bloomberg Terminal's main news page before becoming the European editor for a global project to produce short, chart-based stories across the newsroom. His previous work as a journalist took him to Hong Kong, where he reported and edited for several technology magazines, and he also has experience in market research and writing computer manuals. Sheldon has an MBA from the London Business School and an industrial chemistry degree from Brunel University. He owns a small amount of ether.