On June 24 2021, Jay Powell and Janet Yellen sat down for their weekly breakfast amid the austere surroundings of the US Treasury building on 1,500 Pennsylvania Avenue. There was only one major question on the agenda: should they give the green light for a global cryptocurrency designed by Facebook?
The chair of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury secretary were both DC veterans; Powell had replaced Yellen at the top of the Fed. But neither had had to make such an unusual decision. An alliance of tech companies led by Facebook proposed to launch a product it hoped would profoundly change the world. Rather than adhering to the social media giant’s one-time mantra “move fast and break things”, executives had come to Washington to ask permission first.
