The US Division of Housing and City Growth is reportedly seeking to experiment with utilizing blockchain and a stablecoin for a few of its features.
The division, whose duties embody overseeing social housing, has up to now mentioned the potential for utilizing blockchain to observe grants, ProPublica reported on March 7, citing a gathering recording, paperwork and three officers accustomed to the matter.
Additionally mentioned was the thought of experimenting with paying a HUD grantee utilizing a stablecoin, which may first be examined in one of many division’s workplaces earlier than being utilized broadly throughout different workplaces.
HUD, headed by Trump choose Scott Turner, has additionally been wrapped up in Musk’s cost-cutting blitz. Supply: Secretary Turner Press Workplace
Two officers advised ProPublica they consider the HUD blockchain experiment might be a trial run for using crypto and blockchain throughout the federal authorities.
A gathering final month mentioned a venture the place the Group Planning and Growth workplace, which oversees billions of {dollars} in grants that help reasonably priced housing and homeless shelters, would observe funds to 1 grantee on the blockchain.
One assembly attendee later wrote the necessity for the venture was “not properly articulated,” and a HUD official slammed the plan in a workers memo as “harmful and inefficient.” They added it was pointless and sophisticated and that stablecoin funds would add volatility.
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At a follow-up assembly, HUD staffers had a extra blended evaluation, with some saying the blockchain venture may contain paying grantees with crypto and one official saying it might be performed with “a steady foreign money.” One other finance official stated blockchain could be carried out throughout the company, beginning within the CPD.
Nonetheless, a HUD spokesperson advised ProPublica that “the division has no plans for blockchain or stablecoin. Training is just not implementation.”
President Donald Trump has carefully embraced the crypto business, and the reported HUD experiment mimics the concepts of his cost-cutting czar Elon Musk, who helps utilizing blockchain in a bid to curb federal spending.
In the meantime, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated on the White Home Crypto Summit on March 7 that the federal government would ”put numerous thought into the stablecoin regime” in a bid to “maintain the US [dollar] the dominant reserve foreign money on the earth.”
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