Senator Reintroduces Legislation to Ban Chinese Digital Yuan in US Transactions

‘The dollar is the reserve currency of the world and the CCP wants to undermine our leadership with a digital currency,’ Sen. Rick Scott said.

Sen. Rick Scott speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on December 18, 2024.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) has reintroduced legislation to prevent the use of China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the U.S. market.

The legislation, called the Chinese CBDC Prohibition Act, would impose a ban on the Chinese digital currency, variously known as the digital yuan, digital renminbi, e-CNY, or e-yuan. The Chinese digital currency is issued and regulated by China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC).

“The dollar is the reserve currency of the world and the CCP wants to undermine our leadership with a digital currency they can track and manipulate. This is unacceptable for America,” Scott said in a statement on May 22, using the acronym of the Chinese Communist Party.

Scott, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the Chinese digital currency is another tool by the CCP to “spy on its people and all those who use it.”

“[Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] and his thugs have no business playing big brother to American citizens and how they spend their money,” Scott said. “Americans deserve privacy when it comes to their financial transactions and the last thing they need is Communist China spying on them.”

The legislation (S.4601), which would amend the Bank Secrecy Act, states that “no money services business may engage in any transaction, directly, or indirectly, that involves a central bank digital currency issued by the People’s Republic of China.”

The legislation would apply to money services businesses (MSBs), currency dealers, and the U.S. Postal Service, barring them from transactions involving the digital yuan, according to Scott’s office.

Scott first introduced the legislation in November 2023, along with Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). Then-Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.) introduced the legislation in the House in the same year.

China has positioned itself as one of the world’s foremost countries in developing and testing a sovereign digital currency through its digital yuan. According to China’s state-run media outlet Xinhua, China had processed 3.4 billion digital yuan transactions, totaling about 16.7 trillion yuan (about $2.4 trillion), by the end of November 2025.

PBOC Governor Pan Gongsheng, in a speech in June last year, touted that China’s digital yuan would help realize the vision of a “multipolar international monetary system,” according to a transcript released by China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

Experts have warned about Beijing’s digital currency.

In 2021, Kyle Bass, a hedge fund manager, called on the U.S. government to ban the Chinese digital currency, in an interview with EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.” Bass warned that once individuals predominantly use the digital yuan, they could become targets of Chinese influence and coercion.

“So imagine if you and I were sitting here in this interview, and I said something negative about the Chinese Communist Party, and I had accepted the digital yuan as payment, they could just turn it off or they could restrict my ability to buy a plane ticket to China,” Bass said at the time.

In an op-ed published by The Epoch Times in April, James Gorrie, author of the 2013 book “The China Crisis,” argued that Beijing’s ambitions for the digital yuan are faltering, citing stalled domestic adoption and what he described as the Chinese public’s “collective shrug” toward the digital money.

China’s economic troubles, including youth unemployment and the property market crisis, have also prevented the CCP from achieving the success it had hoped for when the digital money was first rolled out, Gorrie added.

“The digital yuan evolution is happening as the ‘China Miracle’ enters its death throes,” Gorrie wrote.

Nevertheless, Gorrie argued that the CCP will not scrap its digital money.

“The digital yuan will likely be relegated to a specialized tool for state-to-state transactions, government disbursements, and auditing local officials,” Gorrie wrote. “Plus, the digital yuan is ultimately about increasing control over the people and preserving the CCP’s rule over the country.”