Jared Kushner is a bitcoin and crypto fan, Mnuchin emails show
New documents show that one of former President Donald Trump’s most trusted and senior advisors was secretly pushing the White House to lean into crypto, well before skyrocketing crypto prices reignited mainstream interest in the space.
In 2019, when crypto was in the midst of a multiyear bear market, Jared Kushner — Trump’s son-in-law and a senior adviser — was quietly advocating for a U.S. digital dollar, in which the Fed would launch its own central bank currency.
The information was gleaned from a 250-page dump of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s crypto-related e-mail correspondence from his four years in the job, which was was obtained by CoinDesk through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Other insights include details surrounding the fight between the crypto lobby and Mnuchin over the Treasury Department’s last-minute attempt at rolling out new rules pertaining to user-controlled digital wallets.
Neither Mnuchin nor Kushner immediately responded to CNBC’s request for comment about their crypto-related email exchanges.
Kushner backs a digital dollar
On May 29, 2019, Kushner, who was more known for his work on the administration’s foreign-policy efforts rather than fiscal matters, sent an e-mail to Mnuchin to suggest that a group be assembled to “have a brainstorm” about the topic of a U.S. digital currency.
The note included a link to a blog post by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in which Altman argues that while the U.S. government cannot stop cryptocurrency, it can “create the winner.”
Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Treasury secretary, from left, U.S. President Donald Trump, and Jared Kushner, senior White House adviser, listen during a bi-lateral meeting with Saad Hariri, Lebanon’s prime minister, not pictured, at the White House in Washington, D.C.
Zach Gibson | Bloomberg | Getty Images
In the post, Altman riffed on a hypothetical U.S. digital currency, or USDC, which would function as a second legal currency. He goes on to say that if the U.S. was the first superpower government to launch a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, it would have an “enviable position in the future of the world” and exercise some degree of power over a worldwide currency.
“My sense is it could make sense and also be something that could ultimately change the way we pay out entitlements as well saving us a ton in waste fraud and also in transaction costs,” Kushner wrote.
There was no reply from Mnuchin among the documents, so it is unclear whether the Treasury secretary took any action.
Kushner’s view on the CBDC phenomenon ultimately proved prescient.
Few countries were seriously dabbling in national digital currencies in mid-2019, but today, at least 87 countries representing over 90% of global GDP are exploring a CBDC, according to research from the Atlantic Council.
China is miles ahead of the rest of the world, having spent years developing and piloting its digital yuan. Beijing is currently in the process of ramping up efforts to roll out the so-called e-CNY to the…
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