The United States Federal Election Commission is the official body that is charged with conducting elections in the US. In a new twist, the commission has issued a new advisory opinion in regards to the use of cryptocurrency and elections. Henceforth, people are now allowed to make contributions to political campaigns by giving out their computer power to be used for mining cryptocurrency for the political candidates of their choices.
The Details Of The New Directive
This decision to allow crypto mining has arrived at a time when Americans are just getting ready for the presidential elections in 2022. They actually kicked off in a quiet mode immediately the midterm elections in November 2018 were wrapped.
Later, on November 13th, the FEC issued a new memorandum. In it, the body stated that it is just fine for a person to lend his computer mining power to a crypto mining pool as a way of benefiting a candidate. But in addition to that, there are some underscores that the commission made. It stated that the act is regarded as a campaign contribution and not volunteering.
The Cryptocurrency Converge and Politics
The Federal Election Commission had been responding to a request that was made by OsiaNetwork LLC. This Delaware-based obscure firm wanted to act as a platform where persons can donate their computing power to mine the virtual coins. In basic terms, the corporation is trying to monetize the procedure of political fundraiser by charging campaigns and emerge as crypto mining pools platform.
The legal director of Free Speech for People, Ronald Fein, is however worried that the FEC officials are very clueless about the cryptocurrency. His company had earlier sent a letter to the election body. In the letter, they opposed the request earlier made by OsiaNetwork.
OsiaNetwork has stated that it will proportionately allocate the mining rewards to the total hashes that are generated by each volunteer’s committee. This is the only way it would be able to solve the block generating the mining reward.
It will then take away its processing fee and move it to each political committee funds in dollars to the currency value the committee uses. That is how it gets paid.
Federal Candidates Who Accepted Cryptocurrency In 2018
2014 is the year the election body began to allow crypto donations for political campaigns. In the election cycle of 2017 and 2018, a total of $570,000 was the amount received by nine federal candidates in crypto donations. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky made news when he became the first US presidential candidate to accept crypto for political campaigns. That was in 2016.
It is not a surprise that Rand Paul decided to fully embrace the digital assets. In terms of party affiliations, he is a Republican, but when it comes to personal philosophy, he is a libertarian. His father, an ex-US Congressman is now asking for tax exemption on all the cryptos. According to Ron Paul, Rand Paul’s father, this is the only way recession can be prevented.