On July 22, the Senate Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on Economic Policy held a hearing on the role of innovation in the growing community.

T-Systems is now a Chainlink node operator
Today’s hearing comes on the heels of a Justice Department indictment of several hackers accused of working for the Chinese government to steal trade secrets from U.S. companies and to crack down on dissidents in places like Hong Kong.

CBDC as an area of competence

J. Christopher Giancarlo, former president of the CFTC and current leader of the Digital Dollar Project, testified today about the declining infrastructure of the United States, including payments.

The Digital Dollar Project and Giancarlo himself are leading advocates of a digital currency from the U.S. central bank (CBDC), which they believe is critical to maintaining the country’s economic position. Giancarlo continued some of his points from a hearing before the entire Banking Committee at the end of June.

China considers implementing blockchain technology in stock trading centres
Today’s audience found Giancarlo talking more extensively about the specific advantages of distributed registration technology than he and other representatives of the Digital Dollar Project have so far. In his opening remarks, he said:

„The DLT network would operate on a self-contained authorized network and would guarantee the validity and integrity of all transactions. Verification of transactions would be based on the complete history or lineage of tokens from the original issue to attest that the tokens are genuine and have not been spent twice.

The economics of innovation and the balance of power

Lisa Cook, a professor at Michigan State University, pointed out several critical features of America’s innovation economy that give it a competitive advantage. On U.S. intellectual property protections in particular, Cook said

„It is clear that the U.S. patent system offers something that the Chinese government will not or cannot offer to its inventors and entrepreneurs: determination of originality (or patent first) and defense of intellectual property.

Bank of Jamaica invites technology companies to test solutions for its CBDC
Commenting on China’s ability with Professor Walter Russell Mead, he said that

„Under the new system of hyper-centric control that increasingly characterizes China today, the distinctions between state corporations and private companies can no longer be taken literally.“

China’s progress on CBDC has caused many U.S. regulators to pay greater attention to the field amidst a broader escalation of tensions between the two nations.