The crypto fever is slowly, but surely trespassing all kinds of frontiers and entering new applications in our everyday life. They have even entered politics for quite some time now; the 2018 US mid-term elections that took place recently is an epitome of that.
According to a news piece published by outlet TrustNodes this Wednesday, two candidates that were elected to be governors in the elections are widely known as “pro-cryptocurrencies:” they represent the states of California and Colorado.
An electoral process was held on Tuesday in the United States of America. The races were federal, state, or for local offices. The mid-term elections, as they are known, occurred in the middle of Donald Trump’s term as president. A total of 435 seats in the US House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the US Senate were contested, as were 39 states and territorial governorships.
In the process, the Republicans added to their majority of seats in the Senate, but the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives.
BitPay as a Means to Accept Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash Donations
The case of California’s Democrat candidate Gavin Newsom is a noteworthy one. He brought up cryptocurrencies to the scene in 2014, a time when he accepted donations to his campaign in Bitcoin (BTC.) He sealed a resounding triumph over Republican John Cox with 59 percent of the votes.
Some of the most famous donors on Newsom’s behalf are the Winklevoss twins, who contributed more than $100,000 to his ultimately winning campaign last year. The newly-elected governor had a page in BitPay, where supporters could donate via Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash.
The case of Newsom is not the only one that can have an impact in the crypto landscape in the short and medium-term. Another Democrat with an inclination for digital currencies won at the Rocky Mountains. His name is Jared Polis, who beat Republican Walker Stapleton for a seat as the state’s governor. The results were closer than in California, 51.6 percent to 45 percent.
A Whole Catalog of Blockchain-Inclusive Plans for Colorado
As was the case with Newsom, Polis also maintained a BitPay account in which he received donations via Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH.) In his website, Polis had an entire section dedicated to explain his Blockchain Policy, divided into five specific areas in which he would like to apply the technology and reap the benefits.
Among the themes covered in Polis’s blockchain policy were voter protection, cybersecurity infrastructure, energy solutions based on the blockchain technology, and the use of the public ledger to provide trust and transparency to state contracts, expenditure, and other related processes.
The newly-elected politician in Colorado wants to work together with blockchain firms to lay the foundations to build government applications that “save taxpayers money and create value for Colorado residents,” according to Cointelegraph.
Polis has made no secret that he wants to, as quoted by Cointelegraph, “create a statewide safe harbor designed to exempt cryptocurrencies from state money transmissions laws.”
By Andres Chavez
