The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has begun soliciting donations in cryptocurrency — the first of its kind to do so.
The NRCC is a campaign arm of the Republican Party, working to elect candidates to the United States House of Representatives. This move makes the NRCC the first national party committee to solicit crypto donations. While the first party committee to do so, several federal political candidates have accepted crypto donations in the past.
However, the Federal Election Commission has expressed concerns over how cryptocurrencies relate to federal transparency and disclosure rules. Like other political committees soliciting crypto contributions, the NRCC will gather identifying information from all individuals making donations via digital currencies.
That the NRCC making this decision is only natural, given its leadership. The NRCC chairman, Rep. Tom Emmer, is also a co-chair of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus, as well as a member of the House Financial Services Committee. He has advocated for the IRS to ease regulations on cryptocurrency donations to charitable groups.
Crypto donation processing
Upon receiving the donations, the crypto will immediately be converted into dollars before entering the NRCC’s account. This means that the committee never actually takes possession of the donated cryptocurrencies.
This enables it to bypass a regulation limiting individual political donations of cryptocurrencies to $100 per year. By converting the crypto to dollars the NRCC can still accept individual donations of up to $10,000 per year. The NRCC will process the donations using the payment processor BitPay.
BitPay booms
By enabling the national party committee to accept crypto payments, BitPay is expanding into politics as well as business. BitPay has experienced a growing demand for its services over the past year, as businesses scramble to jump on board.
In March, BitPay began facilitating crypto payments for luxury hotel chain Kessler Collection. The next month, the platform started providing its services to online retailer Newegg, as well as workspace sharing platform WeWork.
BitPay CCO Sonny Singh highlighted how his business was booming in light of the increased demand for crypto payment capacity. “My phone is now ringing off the hook every day of companies now wanting to accept crypto,” he remarked.
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