This is like the Postal Service announcing they are creating their own "electronic messaging system" like email. Why? What would be the point? It wouldn't save them, and there's no reason to think they'd do it better than is already being done by others. The shortcomings of bitcoin (security and ease of use) are not solvable by the Fed or any roomful of Nobel Laureates, so them creating an altcoin would be pointless. Any innovation they could come up with could just be replicated by every other crypto in existence. The only edge they could possibly get would be regulatory/legal in nature, and it would be blatantly obvious to everyone if such favoritism were put into words. That would simply wake up Wall Street and Mainstream America to the nepotism and how it would be inferior to existing cryptos in the ways that matter, which would end up providing a big boost to real cryptocurrency, even if it had to happen "underground."