I spent a day hosting Rosie Rios, the 43rd Treasurer of the U.S. whose signature is on $1.8 trillion worth of physical dollar notes, and who is now a director at Ripple, making her just the right person to ask how the digital dollar will evolve. She sounded optimistic, but in a qualified way, which made me even more curious. Maybe because she is compromised when asked to make a stand – to predict the end of the physical dollar and to herald the advent of the digital dollar. But it also make me think that she had a few additional steps to be considered. Also, the fact that Ripple is currently making a bid for Circle, denotes a transition underway even between the different stablecoin and cryptocurrency models.
For a Democrat, she is very right leaning and very supportive of Trump policies. She was optimistic that although the Trump Administration had shredded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), consumer protection will be reconstituted down the road. Open Banking has also been railroaded in the U.S. at a time when #AI is aggregating a lot of data into the hands of banks and big businesses. At the time of writing, the CFPB has moved to rescind Rule 1033 which requires banks to share their data with fintechs if consumers want them to. It is hard to see how the administration will pivot away from supporting big businesses and banks and err on the side of the consumer.
A rare Democrat in a Republican administration, Rosie is also chair of the bipartisan U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission tasked to organize the America250 celebrations coming up next year. I joked with her that her job was to make the US attractive again, but her rebuttal was that the US never lost its attractiveness. She is collaborating to incorporate the FIFA World Cup Soccer and Olympics into the celebrations.
