The National Republican Congressional Committee — the U.S. Republican Party’s main fundraising group dedicated to electing more Republicans to the House of Representatives — will begin accepting donations in cryptocurrency, according to political news site Axios.

Fast facts:

  • The NRCC won’t actually hold the cryptocurrency itself. Instead, they will use the payment processing app BitPay to exchange all crypto donations into fiat before transferring the cash to their accounts. This way, the NRCC will be able to accept donations up to the usual limit amount of US$10,000 per individual, as opposed to a limit of US$100 worth of cryptocurrency imposed by the Federal Election Commission in 2014.
  • Given the anonymity of cryptocurrency, the FEC is concerned about how this decision might interact with current political donation transparency and disclosure regulation.
  • Chairman of the NRCC, Rep. Tom Emmer, along with a bipartisan group called the House Blockchain Caucus, recently called on the Internal Revenue Service to ease the agency’s regulations on charitable donations in crypto of up to US$5,000. Currently, such donations require an IRS appraiser to determine their value, as opposed to other crypto purchases and sales which are determined by the market.