My hot take is that the US govt will not issue a CBDC, but will use stable coins like USDC to be a de facto CBDC.

1. USDC currently acts as a short term money market fund, and as such would be a huge buyer of short term and long term US debt. This could be a huge benefit to the US gov and FED to keep their Ponzi running.

2. If the government issues a CBDC we would all have accounts directly with the FED, forcing a multi trillion dollar banking industry to find a new business model - one than doesn’t use depositors money. This would create turmoil in that industry.

3. A “stable coin” digital dollar would find enormous use outside of the US (South America, Turkey, Africa, etc.) as other currencies fail and would increase demand for US debt (see #1). This would also be their only way to compete against Bitcoin.

4. There will be a public/private partnership between huge banks / credit card companies/ and the us government to create the USDC and in return for this privilege, there will be massive regulations and these companies will need to hand over all sorts data on customers. Very similar to the current system.

This seems to me the more rational route for them to take, as I don’t think the government wants to directly manage a blockchain and would outsource that liability to private corporations, and allows for the current debt based system not only to survive but expand.