Minnesota House Bill Aims to Outlaw Cryptocurrency Donations
Four Democratic House Representatives want to outlaw crypto donations to politicians.
A group of Democratic Minnesota House Representatives have some opinions on crypto and, well, they don't want it mixing into political donations. Minnesota House Bill 2884, introduced by Rep. Rick Hansen (D), Rep. Jamie Becker-finn (D), Rep. Raymond Dehn (D), and Rep. Peter Fischer (D), wants to outlaw "from any source a contribution or donation of any digital unit of exchange, including but not limited to bitcoin, that is not backed by a government-issued legal tender."
Interestingly, it's not clear where stablecoins would fall here.
The full text of the Bill is below:
As we can see, this could be a serious deterrent for a certain swathe of voter, especially since crypto is slowly entering politics. The first candidate to accept bitcoin, Andrew Hemingway, took donations in it as early as 2014 and it appears Andrew Yang is accepting crypto donations for his presidential bid. Many others are following suit.
The representatives introduced the Bill on May 14, 2019 and the House is currently in recess. We've reached out to them for further comment.
Photo by Nicole Harrington on Unsplash