Texas Lawmakers Introduce Bill Proposing to Establish a Gold-Backed Digital Currency

Recent discussions by U.S. lawmakers focused on the return to the gold standard. Recently, Marjorie Taylor Greene , a Georgia representative, advocated its reinstatement. A number of bureaucrats have been vocally opposed to the creation a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis as well as Greene, have opposed CBDCs. Two Texas legislators have now introduced a bill (S.B. No. No.

The Texas bill says that the comptroller will create a digital currency that is gold-backed so that each unit of digital currency issued represents a fraction of a troy ton of gold held in trust. Hughes and Dorazio, the bill’s authors, explain that the trustee must have enough gold to allow for redemption in gold of any units of digital currency that have been issued but are not yet redeemable for money or gold.

The United States has been removing the gold standard for decades. If the bill gains momentum, the U.S. Treasury Department could not approve Texas’s attempts to create a digital currency that is backed by gold. Private creations of gold-backed alternative currencies have been stopped by the U.S. government. Bernard von NotHaus’ Liberty Dollar headquarters was shut down on March 18, 2007. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which was then conducting an investigation, seized nine tons of silver and gold that were backing the Liberty Dollars.

The U.S. Federal Grand Jury also shut down the egold digital currency project of Gold & Silver Reserve Inc. (G&SR) in the same year as the Liberty Dollar. The state government would manage the digital currency that is gold-backed as proposed by the Texas bill. 13 states have tried to create alternate, state-run, goldbacked currencies in the past 14 years. However, all of these efforts have failed.

The state’s comptroller would manage the trust that holds the proposed digital currency, which is gold-backed. The bill states that the trust will not allow for legislative appropriation of certain money or deposits. The Texas legislators also note that the bill establishes a digital currency. This means that the comptroller will create a way to make it easy for anyone who has the currency to transfer or assign it to another person electronically.