Federal Reserve to Host October Conference on Crypto, AI, and Payments Innovation
Fed Steps Into the Future: October Conference Puts Crypto, AI, and Payments in Spotlight
Central Bank's Digital Push
The Federal Reserve gears up for a groundbreaking October conference that puts cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, and next-gen payments front and center. No vague promises—just hard focus on the technologies reshaping global finance.
Why It Matters Now
Traditional finance finally wakes up to what crypto natives knew years ago: innovation waits for no one. The Fed's move signals institutional acceptance is accelerating—whether they're ready or not.
Behind the Scenes
Expect heated debates on regulatory frameworks, CBDC developments, and how AI could predict—or prevent—the next market crash. Wall Street veterans and crypto disruptors will clash in what promises to be anything but another boring banking symposium.
The Bottom Line
While bureaucrats debate, decentralized networks keep building. Funny how the same institutions that once dismissed crypto now scramble to understand it—almost like they finally noticed the train left the station.
Fed’s stake in the payments system
This payment system conversation was initiated by Waller late last month. According to him, buying crypto with stablecoins through smart contracts follows the same fundamental process as using debit cards at grocery stores. He also said that there is nothing to be afraid of when thinking about using smart contracts, tokenization, or distributed ledgers in everyday transactions.
The Federal Reserve is extremely involved in the payments business. According to a FedNow information sheet from last month, since July 2023, it has been running the FedNow real-time payments program. The program has around 1,400 participating banks and $2.7 billion in daily transactions.
It also manages the Fedwire Funds Service, and its regional bank system acts as an operator, along with The Clearing House, for ACH payments.
Recently, Governor Christopher Waller said, “It is my belief that the Federal Reserve could benefit from further engagement with innovators in industry, particularly as there is increased convergence between the traditional financial sector and the digital asset ecosystem.”
According to him, the Fed must understand whether emerging technologies could provide opportunities to improve our existing platforms and services. Waller also advocates for private sector-led innovation as the primary driver of payment system advancement. He calls stablecoins the latest example of market-driven solutions.
Waller repeats call for rate cuts in September
Other than being a pro-crypto, like Trump, Waller also supports rate cuts. Today, the Fed governor repeated his support for September rate cuts. According to him, the job market is getting weaker. He added that how quickly the central bank cuts rates after that will depend on what happens next in the economy.
In an interview on CNBC, Waller said, “I think we need to start cutting rates at the next meeting, and then we don’t have to go in a locked sequence of steps […] We can kind of see where things are going, because people are still worried about tariff inflation … I WOULD say over the next three to six months, we could see multiple cuts coming in.”
He thinks that tariffs might raise inflation in the next few months, but he thinks it will only be for a short time and that inflation will start to fall toward the Fed’s 2% goal in six or seven months.
He indicated that because there is less demand for workers, the Fed should start lowering the policy rate from its current 4.25%-4.50% range toward an estimated neutral rate of 3%. The speed of these changes should depend on economic data.
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