Recently a political action committee (PAC) BitPAC announced that they are going to conduct an initial coin offering (ICO) to support the candidates for public office. By donating, participants will receive Politicoins in return.
BitPAC, which is a political group in the U.S., decided to launch an ICO for the support of public office candidates. Also, they are going to issue a token – Politicoin, which the group’s founder, Dan Backer, explains is a utility token which has no actual value. Instead, the goal is to grant “some sort” of voting right to the holders of these Politicoins.
“It’s a utility token, not a thing of value. I don’t care if people want to buy, sell trade their token if an exchange wants to list it that’s [fantastic]. We have some larger scale, grand or long-term plans but we have to start [somewhere],” said Backer.
So which candidates are going to be supported? Well, for starters, the initial goal for this ICO campaign is to support, firstly, a single candidate – Dan Bishop, a North Carolina state senator. Dan is running for the U.S. House of Representatives in a special election.
However, the ultimate goal that Backer has in mind is for a future platform where voters can show support for any candidate they want. Of course, provided that they are registered with the U.S. Federal Election Commission. Basically, Backer calls this project an experiment, which it is, in this one quote:
“I think it’s going to be interesting to see. Win or lose, we’re going to learn a lot about this process.”
Additionally, this is not the first time BitPAC is involved in subjects related to cryptocurrency donations to politicians. The committee was originally launched in 2014. Back then, they were figuring out the idea of how political candidates could accept Bitcoin.
According to Backer, it was unclear for them at that time. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop them from sending out paper wallets with Bitcoin in them to eight politicians. By doing this, they hoped that the recipients would go to the FEC to seek clarity on how to operate with these donations, but they didn’t, except one who didn’t cash it, says Backer. The PAC was terminated in 2018, but now Dan Backer has revived it for clarity reasons because the issue is still unclear:
“I looked at all of the candidates we gave the cryptocurrency to, not one reported, I think one reported but didn’t cash it.”
The recipients to whom BitPAC sent Bitcoin paper wallets included Senators Chuck Schumer, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Ron Wyden, as well as Representative Maxine Waters and former Representatives Paul Ryan, Jeb Hensarling and Jared Polis.
“The outcome is voters get a candidate they like and want and we get a candidate who understands the importance of cryptocurrency and will be an advocate for cryptocurrency in Congress,” optimistically explained Dan Backer.
So far, according to the FEC filings, in the first half of 2019, BitPAC has raised nearly $22,000.
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