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Lake County Treasurer Holly Kim has set a milestone by becoming the first-ever political candidate in Illinois to accept campaign contributions in crypto. What started as a $3 donation in Litecoin, has now become a campaign strategy by accepting all cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin and Dogecoin.
“It seems to be how people want to give…I feel like it’s a new frontier.”, said Kim.
Crypto Donation process for Kim’s campaign
Kim, with help of the election board, has set up a website to incorporate crypto donations. She announced that her campaign donations will be welcomed in cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum. Furthermore, she will also accept Bitcoin Cash and Dai. The election board stated that crypto payments will be considered as in-kind donations of corporate stock, instead of the traditional fiat.
However, donations in form of cryptocurrencies are permitted by the Federal Election Commission since 2014, yet this will be the first practical filing of crypto as a campaign contribution in the state.
Illinois’ State Board of Election revealed that nobody to date has received such a donation. The broad further explained that to meet the campaign contribution limits, crypto donations will be calculated in USD. The state board also warned of crypto’s highly volatile nature, highlighting that in a short amount of time the value could either skyrocket or hit the ground.
“Before this, it has come up (in speculative scenarios), but not in any serious way in terms of someone calling and saying, ‘I’m going to be taking funds…This is the first actual solid case where we know the candidate intends to report cryptocurrency as a campaign contribution.”, said Matt Dietrich, spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Elections.
Kim has also shared her plans for the crypto donations she will be receiving during the process. She revealed that she intends to hold the currencies long-term in the crypto wallet and wait for a bull run. Additionally, she also mentioned that “if worse comes to worst, we can always convert it (to dollars).”, referring to an unsurprising bearish phase in the crypto community.
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