Since thedollarwas created in 1792, U.S. presidents and their families have generally been content with the status quo of effectively giving the national government a monopoly on issuingcurrencyand outlawing the use of foreign currency.
Consider the launch of the dollar the country's Initial Coin Offering, back when the U.S. government was hustling to surpass the dominance of the Spanish pieces of eight then in common circulation throughout the country.
When presidents have said anything about the dollar itself, it was generally to reiterate the U.S. government's "strong dollar" policy.
That continued more or less uninterrupted through 46 presidencies — until last March, when a company partly owned by PresidentDonald Trumpand his family began to market an alternative to the dollar, acryptocurrencydubbed "USD1."
On Wednesday, the president's two oldest sons told CNBC on the sidelines of a daylong crypto event they hosted why they think that should change.
The value of USD1, which is marketed as a stablecoin, would track the dollar, much as the dollar when it was created in 1792 was initially pegged to the value of the then-dominant Spanish silver dollar.
The Trumps' company,World Liberty Financial, touts USD1 as an improvement on official U.S. currency. The firm's website brands its stablecoin as "The Dollar. Upgraded." And it calls the coin "still the US dollar, but for a new era."
On Wednesday, the firm held theWorld Liberty Forumat Mar-a-Lago, the club owned by the president and operated as his winter White House.
The event, coming just before the first anniversary of the release of USD1, brought together financiers, technologists, television personalities, the president of the world soccer organization FIFA and the artist Nicki Minaj.
From a Mar-a-Lago ballroom stage beneath an enormous stylized golden eagle sculpture, the message to attendees was that the old U.S. dollar needs to be modernized, that the private sector is the place to drive that innovation, and that stablecoins will help taxpayers by creating structural demand for U.S.government debt.
Source: Drudge Report
