As China’s digital yuan takes the global stage at the winter Olympics, a top cryptocurrency executive believes the U.S. is actually ahead in the worldwide digital currency game.

Recently, the Federal Reserve has unveiled its thinking about how a central bank digital coin might operate, without taking any firm stance on the topic. Only 2 countries, Nigeria and the Bahamas, have functional CBDCs, while a few other economies are moving toward pilots this year.

However, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire reiterated his belief that “the U.S. is winning the digital currency space race” in an interview with Yahoo Finance. Circle has the largest U.S.-issued stablecoin with more than 50 billion in circulation, and has supported about $1.7 trillion in transactions over the past year.

A CBDC needs qualities like transparency, accessibility, and “a standard and technology that people can innovate, without permission,” he said.

“That's the kind of dollar I think we want to win in this space race and on the Internet, as opposed to something that is tightly controlled [and] government administered, which is what China initiatives really represent,” the CEO added.

Looking at Circle’s stablecoin (USDC) alone, there are hundreds of different digital wallets that support this in hundreds of countries on exchanges all around the world, Allaire said. The question is whether the U.S. can gain momentum behind this, and create a competitive, open model – mirroring how the West has approached the Internet over the past decades – is brought to bear on the booming digital coin movement.

Circle recently launched an ad campaign promoting the features of private stablecoins over a central bank digital currency, and just after the House held a hearing on regulating the blossoming stablecoin sector.

The Circle ad took aim at CBDCs that “carry the specter of privacy erosion, making cyber threats and technology upgrades a taxpayer burden, rather than the motive of free-market drive, and well-regulated competition.”

As the Fed takes baby steps toward issuing a digital dollar, Allaire believes private stablecoins will coexist with central bank digital currencies in the future. “We're starting to see policymakers emphasize that this is here to stay, this is growing,” he told Yahoo Finance. “I think there's an acknowledgement that there's a here and now.”

Stablecoin's 'open questions'

This week, Treasury Undersecretary for Domestic Finance, Nellie Liang, told Congress that a CBDC will probably determine exactly how stablecoins coexist with a Fed coin. She added it may be possible for a Fed coin to supplant stablecoins, depending on the kinds of features the Fed would choose for it.