2013-11-07 Politico: FEC poised to allow Bitcoin campaign donations

[Singlebyte]

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/bitcoin-campaign-donations-draft-rule-99566.html?hp=r3

[Alty]

This could become big news!

[Singlebyte]

This could become big news!

This is HUGE!


Funny that Wikipedia still doesn't accept them.  Lol

[dancingnancy]

Wow, unreal.

[rogue13]

So they would have to watch donations and make sure they don't exceed campaign contribution limits, makes sense. But what is to stop a wealthy person from contributing just under this limit from a bunch of addresses that are not obviously connected?

[darkmule]

So they would have to watch donations and make sure they don't exceed campaign contribution limits, makes sense. But what is to stop a wealthy person from contributing just under this limit from a bunch of addresses that are not obviously connected?

Nothing other than the fear of being caught.  The same people can currently use smurfs to make donations or funnel money through all kinds of dark money organizations to accomplish their ends, without necessarily directly contributing to any specific candidate.

[altoz]

I'm sure they're still going to require donors to register. The real benefit of this news is this. Reporters will know exactly how much in bitcoin donations each candidate received. This is a constant ongoing process that's easily verifiable instead of reports that each campaign puts out.

So when someone is getting a lot of bitcoin donations, this is going to be news-worthy. And you'll be able to keep track of how much money each candidate has raised in real-time. That, in turn, is going to make the campaigns want to make their own bitcoin address look good. That means ASKING for bitcoin donations wherever they can, probably from multiple addresses.

So yea, this is awesome. This introduces an incentive for candidates to love bitcoin.

[vokain]

a whale can donate a sum of coins to the candidate at the current market price under FEC limits, drive up the price by buying up millions of dollars of coins on an obscure low-volume exchange at the according price the candidate set, and funnel tons of money to a candidate legally that way.

[darkmule]

a whale can donate a sum of coins to the candidate at the current market price under FEC limits, drive up the price by buying up millions of dollars of coins on an obscure low-volume exchange at the according price the candidate, and funnel tons of money to a candidate legally that way.

Even as a big fan of campaign finance reform in general, this would be pretty awesome.  Imagine all the Bitcoin boats such a scheme could float.

[LiteCoinGuy]

yes indeed, this is great news! one more important step for BTC 

[dancingnancy]

I'm sure they're still going to require donors to register. The real benefit of this news is this. Reporters will know exactly how much in bitcoin donations each candidate received. This is a constant ongoing process that's easily verifiable instead of reports that each campaign puts out.

So when someone is getting a lot of bitcoin donations, this is going to be news-worthy. And you'll be able to keep track of how much money each candidate has raised in real-time. That, in turn, is going to make the campaigns want to make their own bitcoin address look good. That means ASKING for bitcoin donations wherever they can, probably from multiple addresses.

So yea, this is awesome. This introduces an incentive for candidates to love bitcoin.

They will just use the same techniques to hide money such as hidden wallets out of view etc.  Plenty of ways for politicians to love BTC.  I think this is real big though, yes.

[darkmule]

They will just use the same techniques to hide money such as hidden wallets out of view etc.  Plenty of ways for politicians to love BTC.  I think this is real big though, yes.

Individual candidates are required to report both donations and spending, listed by donor and by expenditure.  These reports are available to the public in all kinds of forms, from a horribly structured giant spreadsheet to CSV to searchable lists often created by third parties.  So if the candidate can't explain where money came from to the penny, it gets seized and they pay huge fines.  PACs to some extent as well.

But then there are things like so-called "Super PACs" and outright "dark money" groups entirely exempt from disclosure.  The genuinely wealthy might prefer their campaign dollars not be denominated in anything but the name Benjamin.