The U.S. central bank is not developing its own digital currency, but that could change in the future, said San Francisco Fed President John Williams on Wednesday.

“Right now the Federal Reserve is not developing its own digital currency,” Williams said in a question-and-answer session after a speech in Phoenix, Ariz.

A lot of research is underway “around the world” on whether it makes sense for governments to issue digital currency, he said.

“I think this will be a very exciting area over the next decade,” he said. “I’m not going to say what we will or won’t do because there are no specific plans.”

Williams said he wouldn’t discuss the “hoopla” surrounding bitcoin.

The No.1 cryptocurrency by market cap has skyrocketed 1,000% this year — from just under $1,000 at the outset of 2017 to briefly topping $11,000 on Wednesday.

Read: Bitcoin slumps just hours after topping $11,000 milestone

Harvard economics professor Ken Rogoff said in a recent MarketWatch column that the price of bitcoin BTCUSD, +0.22% will collapse under pressure from governments.

Opinion:State won’t tolerate large-scale anonymous transactions with virtual currencies.

Williams told the audience they are likely to see a flurry of news reports about central banks mulling the issue along the lines of “well, if you are going to have electronic currency, maybe we really should have that be official government currency.”

Earlier Wednesday, New York Fed President William Dudley told students at Rutgers University that digital currency was “something we are starting to think about,” but that it was “very premature” to say anything concrete was in the pipeline.

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari also tweeted Wednesday that the Fed was mulling the issue.