George Selgin on Strategic Bitcoin Reserves, Debanking, and the Fed’s Framework Review

Macro Musings with David Beckworth

George Selgin is a senior fellow and director emeritus of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute. George is also a returning guest to the program, and he rejoins David on Macro Musings to talk about crypto, strategic Bitcoin reserves, and the Fed’s framework review. Specifically, David and George also discuss George’s outlook for a strategic Bitcoin reserve in the US, the significance of the debanking problem, the path to adopting a nominal GDP targeting framework, and much more.

Transcript for this week’s episode.

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George’s Cato profile

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Related Links:

*The ‘Digital Gold’ Fallacy, or Why Bitcoin Can’t Save the US Dollar* by George Selgin

*The Fed’s 2024-25 Framework Review: Optimizing the Dual Mandate Through Nominal GDP Level Targeting* by David Beckworth

*Building a Better Fed Framework* – A monetary policy conference hosted by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER)

Caitlin Long’s X thread on debanking

David Marcus’s X thread on how Libra was killed

*Does Sovereign Default Risk Explain Cryptocurrency Adoption? International Evidence from Mobile Apps* by Rashad Ahmed, Stephen Karolyi, and Leili Pour Rostami

*Digital Gold: Evaluating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve for the United States* by the Bitcoin Policy Institute

*Trump Likes the Idea of a Federal Bitcoin Reserve. Don’t Laugh.* by Tyler Cowen

Timestamps:

(00:00:00) – Intro

(00:01:34) – Evaluating the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Gold

(00:26:22) – George’s Outlook for the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

(00:34:16) – The Significance of the Debanking Problem and the Case of Libra

(00:43:18) – *Building a Better Fed Framework*: George’s Takeaways

(00:49:16) – The Path to Nominal GDP Targeting: Incremental vs. Radical

(00:54:10) – Characterizing a Fed Framework Consensus

(01:00:13) – Outro