The U.S. Department of the Treasury has released comments from Undersecretary for Domestic Finance Nellie Liang on the "Next Steps to the Future of Money and Payments," addressing CBDCs and the approach the American government is taking to their potential implementation.

The original Treasury report released in September 2022 described the formation of a CBDC working group that would advance work on a CBDC. Liang's remarks confirmed the formation of that group.

"One of the central tasks for the CBDC Working Group is to complement the Fed's work by considering the implications of a U.S. CBDC for policy objectives for which a broader Administration perspective is helpful," Liang said.

"To give you a sense of how we are pursuing this work, I will describe our approach to thinking about CBDC options, the policy questions we are attempting to answer, and the kinds of recommendations we hope to develop."

Highlights from this description include a look at the potential forms that a CBDC could take, the potential for a separate retail and wholesale CBDC and the possible core features of the CBDC.

Also discussed is the idea that a "potential U.S. CBDC, if one were created, would best serve the United States by being 'intermediated,' meaning that the private sector would offer accounts or digital wallets to facilitate the management of CBDC holdings and payments. In terms of technology, a retail CBDC might involve a different architecture compared to a CBDC that is intended solely for wholesale use."