A former candidate for the Federal Reserve Board is considering a role at Decentral – a cryptocurrency startup that bills itself as a central bank for the decentralized world. Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who abandoned his shot at the Fed after past comments about women, impeachment, and AIDS surfaced in May, has been offered the unspecified role with the crypto company, which aims to regulate digital assets in much the same way as the Fed does with the U.S. monetary system. He says he will decide within a month whether to take it. The potential move comes on the back of increased use of cryptocurrencies in North America this year.
Conservative Bias
Moore has seemingly surprised people with his pivot from mainstream currencies to cryptocurrency, with the Washington Post quoting him as saying, “I feel like cryptocurrency is like new Internet in terms of challenging the way we do business in America, and how we get information and how we do trades.”
Were he to agree to the move, Moore will join Ralph Benko, former deputy general counsel in the Reagan White House, and Michael Gruen, former campaign advisor to President Trump, on the board, illustrating very clearly the project’s political outlook as well as their monetary policy.
A Crypto Central Bank? Really?
Fox News got the scoop on Moore’s ambitions, and the idea behind Decentral (perhaps unsurprisingly given the political makeup of the board), calling the startup a ‘central bank’ for crypto. The aim of the project, according to Fox, is to “stabilize cryptocurrencies”, which to many in the space will sound like herding cats, attempting to perform Fed-like duties in terms of supply regulation in the same way as the Fed controls monetary supply for the U.S. economy.
How such an entity would go over within the crypto community is not hard to imagine, and indeed the Washington Post has already called the project “something of an oxymoron.” If much more evidence was needed behind Moore’s rationale for any move into the cryptocurrency space, this one quote should suffice: “I’m really excited about doing this. I hope it makes me rich.” Case closed.
