Project Hamilton, ECASH, and the Quest for a Privacy-Protected Digital Dollar
The first two articles in this series explored the proposition that artificial intelligence and robotics will soon be ushering in an economy of unprecedented abundance, and examined the resource and energy constraints that could limit that voluminous growth. If machines eventually replace most of the workforce, society may need some form of Universal High Income (UHI), as Elon Musk and others have suggested, simply to keep purchasing power aligned with productive capacity. In a world where goods and services can be produced in abundance, the challenge may no longer be creating supply. It may be creating enough consumer demand (money) to purchase that potential supply.
A UHI or UBI (Universal Basic Income) would have to be issued digitally by the government. This third article addresses the fear that such a currency would come with strings attached – that it could be programmed to restrict purchases, limit movement, or enforce political conformity, imposing a “digital prison.”
The question posed here is, could a government-issued digital currency be created in a way that is privacy-protected, not programmable, and tradable like cash?
The answer is that it could. In fact, between 2020 and 2022, such a public digital-dollar system was in development. Project Hamilton, a collaborative effort of the Boston Fed and MIT, created a digital dollar that stored no personal data or transaction history, was not programmable to control how the money was spent, could be used without an intermediary, and was also the fastest payment system ever built. It was a digital money design that made a financial control grid impossible.
In late 2022, however, the program was quietly shelved – not because of a failure of design, but because it was thought to threaten the business models of banks and private payment networks. That was the belief, but a public money system built with Hamilton-style digital dollars could actually strengthen local banks, as will be shown here.
Why does all this matter? Congress is currently debating legislation that could make privately issued stablecoins a major component of the future dollar system. Supporters, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, see Treasury-backed stablecoins as a way to strengthen the dollar and create new demand for U.S. government debt. Banks worry that if stablecoins are allowed to pay competitive yields, depositors could move their money out of traditional bank accounts and into digital wallets. But both sides share a common assumption: that future digital dollars must be backed by government debt. There is another possibility—a privacy-protected, non-programmable digital dollar issued directly by the Treasury and designed to function like cash.
The irony is that the privately-issued stablecoins now being implemented by Congress actually are programmable and do threaten the business model of private banks. That subject in order will be explored in a follow-up article. This article will look at the non-programmable alternative that was demonstrated and then abandoned, and at how it could be the only mathematically viable alternative for funding a UHI, if or when that option becomes necessary to maintain economic stability.
The Digital Control Grid We Already Have
For years, the loudest warnings about a central bank digital currency (CBDC) have centered on the fear that a government-issued digital dollar would create an unprecedented surveillance system. However, a surveillance system is already built into the digital money we use today. Hamilton-style digital dollars could have bypassed that invasion of privacy.
More than 95 percent of the money supply is now digital, and the payment rails it runs on — Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Stripe, Zelle, the major banks — already track what you buy and where you buy it. Every purchase is tagged with a merchant category code (MCC), which forms a detailed behavioral map of your life. Behind the scenes, companies like Plaid and Yodlee sit between your bank and the apps you use. When you connect a budgeting or payment app, these intermediaries often copy years of your transaction history — every pharmacy purchase, every restaurant bill, every utility payment. They store it, analyze it, and build profiles of your spending habits that can be shared or sold.
Payment processors use automated systems to flag and sometimes freeze accounts based on activities designated as suspicious by algorithms. PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy, for example, allows it to seize funds for a wide range of activities defined by the company. These decisions are made under corporate policies buried in complicated fine print that few people actually read, policies executed by the company without due process or a clear right of appeal.
Project Hamilton, the Privacy-protected Alternative that Was Shut Down
In contrast, under Project Hamilton a public digital-dollar system was built, tested and proved that could have blocked surveillance, protected privacy, and given Americans a cash-like digital option. Developed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative, Project Hamilton was a working prototype. Phase 1 delivered something no private payment network has ever offered: 1.7 million transactions per second, with settlement in under a second, no personal data stored on the ledger, no transaction history, no account numbers, and no surveillance architecture.
Instead of numbered accounts, it used opaque 32-byte hashes — a fixed-length string of 32 bytes that is cryptographically generated, random-looking, and impossible to link to a person or decode into meaningful information. It might look something like this: 0xA3F9C1E4B7D2F8C9E1A4F3B2C7D9E0F.
The system validated payments without knowing who was making them, and identity checks happened outside the transaction layer, meaning the core ledger never touched personal information. MIT released the entire codebase publicly, so that anyone could inspect it and verify that it was designed to protect users, not monitor them.
In short, the United States successfully built a digital dollar that was fast, private, and not traceable to the user.
In a 2023 report in the MIT Technology Review titled “Is the Digital Dollar Dead?”, Mike Orcutt wrote, “Hamilton’s first phase demonstrated a feasible technical approach, and the researchers promised a ‘Phase 2’ that would explore sophisticated approaches to privacy. But late last year, shortly after the project came under scrutiny from anti-CBDC legislators, the Boston Fed ended Hamilton.”
The Independent Community Bankers of America warned that a CBDC “could destabilize the existing banking system that serves as the backbone of the U.S. economy.” Members of Congress sent letters to the Boston Fed expressing concern that Hamilton’s architecture could bypass commercial banks entirely. Orcutt wrote that CBDC research suddenly became “political red meat.” Bills were introduced to ensure that a digital dollar “never sees the light of day.” And in 2022, the Boston Fed quietly ended the project.
Opponents of developing a U.S. CBDC questioned the need for it. They argued that dollars are already digital. You can pay with a debit card or credit card.
In response, Orcutt quoted Willamette University law professor Rohan Grey, who observed that 5.9 million U.S. households are “unbanked” and limited to using cash, and cash won’t work on Amazon and other online shopping outlets. He added that the non-traceability of cash is a “social good” that needs to be preserved as we transition to a digital world.
The ECASH Act: A Treasury-issued Digital Dollar
In 2022, Grey helped author a U.S. House bill called the Electronic Currency and Secure Hardware Act (ECASH). Introduced by Rep. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts, the legislation directs the Treasury to create and issue a digital dollar that functions like physical cash. According to the ECASH Act Fact Sheet:
The bill mandates several e-cash features, e.g.:
• Legal Tender: E-cash must be legal tender, created and issued into circulation by Treasury, and payable to bearer.
• Financial Inclusion: E-cash must be distributed and used directly by the American public via widely available hardware devices. It must also be capable of peer-to-peer, offline transactions and interoperable with all existing financial institution and payment provider systems. Moreover, in developing e-cash, the Security must prioritize technologies that promote universal access and usability – particularly as relating to individuals with disabilities, low-income individuals, and communities with limited access to internet or telecommunications networks.
• Privacy: E-cash must incorporate key security and functionality safeguards that are generally associated with the use of physical currency – including anonymity, privacy, and minimal generation of data from transactions. E-cash must also be distributed through secure hardware devices that are secured locally via cryptographic encryption or other similar technologies and cannot contain personal identifiable information or be subject to surveillance, transactional data collection, or censorship-enabling features.
Grey envisioned cards that could be tapped together or to smart phones to transfer value anonymously, online or off-line. That such an “ecash” system would work was demonstrated in the 1980s and became available through Credit Suisse in Switzerland in 1998, then through Deutsche Bank in Germany and other banks in Europe, where cash is more often used than in the United States.
The U.S. ECASH Act has not yet been passed, but it is still alive. It is a minority-party bill in a Republican-controlled House that has never passed committee, but it has been reintroduced in subsequent sessions of Congress, including the current 119th Congress.
The Public Option – Still on the Table?
Another bill that has not yet passed – H.R. 1122, the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act – would prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a retail CBDC, ever. But even if that bill passes, there is a public option that is still available. A modern Greenback could be issued through the Treasury, the fiscal arm of the government, rather than through the central bank. This is what is mandated in the ECASH Act – Treasury-issued digital currency.
Far from a new idea, government-issued currency is actually the oldest American monetary tradition we have, dating back to the American colonists and Abraham Lincoln. During the Civil War, the United States had no Federal Reserve, no central bank and no lender of last resort. But it did have a Treasury, and the government was facing an existential crisis. To finance the war without crushing the economy with debt, the Lincoln administration issued Greenbacks: Treasury-created dollars that required no borrowing and paid no interest. They were sovereign, debt-free, interest-free, and issued directly into circulation.
Greenbacks (U.S. Notes) kept the Union solvent, stabilized prices, and funded the war effort as well as a great deal of national infrastructure. They showed that the Treasury can issue money directly when the public interest requires it.
A modern version of that option, a Treasury-issued digital dollar, is not only possible under the Constitution and pending ECASH Act; but if we are heading into an AI-driven economy where Universal High Income becomes necessary to maintain consumer demand, Treasury issuance may be the only model that makes mathematical sense. Treasury-backed stablecoins and the Fed’s Quantitative Easing are both debt-based. With stablecoins, the interest on the Treasuries flows to private issuers. With the bank reserves the Fed issues to buy Treasury debt from banks, the interest flows to the banks. With Treasury-issued dollars, government interest flows to no one, because the government owes it to no one. This is the cleanest, most democratic form of money creation, and it falls squarely within the American monetary tradition.
The age-old objection to that solution is that it would devalue the currency and inflate prices from too much money chasing too few goods. But in an age of unprecedented AI-generated abundance, that maxim would be turned on its head. When too little money is chasing too many goods, the system actually needs an infusion of new money in order to maintain economic balance.
A Public Payment System that Preserves Private Local Banking and Serves the People
How would Treasury dollars reach consumers, and how would they connect to community banks?
One possibility is through postal banks. The United States once had a very popular postal savings system, and Japan still has one. Japan Post Bank, one of the largest deposit-taking institutions in the world, provides universal access, simple accounts, basic payments, and a public option for savings. Yet it coexists with private banks, which continue to make loans and serve as the credit engines of the economy.
A U.S. postal banking system could do the same. The Postal Banking Act is a legislative bill reintroduced in 2022, aimed at re-establishing basic financial services at the United States Postal Service (USPS). Championed by lawmakers including Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Bernie Sanders, the act seeks to provide safe, low-cost alternatives to predatory services like payday loans and check-cashing companies. According to Sen. Gillibrand, it could also generate nearly $19 billion per year for the USPS.
For a UHI, the Treasury could issue the digital dollars, and postal banks could distribute them. Balances above a modest threshold (say $500) could be automatically swept into the customer’s chosen community bank each night. Community banks would remain the lenders, keep lending local while ensuring universal access to public money. Local banks could have access to a public liquidity window through a state-owned public bank, similar to the Bank of North Dakota model.
To prevent fraud, the banks would also continue their function of monitoring large money flows, following the “two-tier” model in which banks handle the Know Your Customer (KYC) and AML monitoring envisioned in Project Hamilton’s documentation.
Conclusion: Stablecoins or Digital Greenbacks?
A stablecoin is a privatized claim on public debt, on which the U.S. government pays interest to the issuer. A Treasury-generated Greenback would be a public claim on public productivity, backed by “the full faith and credit of the United States” – the agreement of U.S. citizens to accept those Treasury-dollars in payment.
Treasury-issued digital dollars built on Project Hamilton architecture could support a UHI or UBI in an AI-driven economy without raising taxes or increasing the federal debt, and without the exponentially growing interest that leads to boom and bust cycles in a debt-based money system. If administered through a public banking model, a digital Greenback system could preserve community banks, provide universal access to the unbanked and under-banked, protect privacy, and keep monetary sovereignty in public hands.
Project Hamilton’s design was the opposite of the surveillance-heavy systems we use today. It used opaque 32-byte tokens that carried no personal information, a ledger that stored no transaction history, and a core that never saw names or account numbers. In other words, Hamilton would have been less programmable and more privacy-preserving than either the bank-created digital dollars Americans already use or the stablecoins being legislatively negotiated now.
Part 4 of this series will look more closely at the stablecoin legislation now pending, and at how that option can serve to strengthen the dollar’s reserve currency status abroad and ease the federal debt crisis without impairing the domestic lending business of local U.S. banks.
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