Candidate for the Bogotá Chamber accepts donations in bitcoin and ether
Accepting donations in cryptocurrencies is something that is spreading more and more, so that politicians around the world are recognizing the advantages of this and have begun to accept donations with these assets. This is the case of the candidate for the House of Representatives of Bogotá, Mauricio Toro Orjuela, who made the decision to promote the use of these technologies in the Colombian territory.
The candidate announced this method of donations for his campaign recently through his social networks and local media. Already on their website you can see a specific section for donations with Bitcoin and Ethereum. This campaign would be the first to accept donations with cryptocurrencies in Colombia, according to Toro himself:
The Bogota candidate has taken as pillars the innovation, the use of new technologies and entrepreneurship from the beginning for his campaign and plans as a political manager, the main reason why he decided to include the option of donations with bitcoins and ethers. According to Toro, the blockchain would be very useful for state affairs such as transparency, ownership records, and participation. The Colombian declared for a medium:
Enabling donations by bitcoin and by Ethereum is simply another sign that we are really a different and innovative campaign, and demonstrate my commitment to FinTech entrepreneurship as well as the adoption of technologies that allow a more inclusive and participatory society.
Of course, in principle this would attract a good part of the crypto-community, by having a candidate that supports the aforementioned technologies. Also, since bitcoin and ether transactions are fully public and anyone can verify them on the network, it is linked with the values that the Toro campaign wants to demonstrate.
Mauricio Toro is a political scientist at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, is part of the Green Alliance party and has previously served as INNpulsa's manager, writer, financial consultant and professor. He was also the winner of the Innovation Award in Product Development of the Chamber of Commerce of Bogotá.
To be able to donate to the Toro campaign with cryptocurrencies, you have to contact them from their official website, as they have disabled automatic donations to protect the money laundering campaign; and also by the fact that bitcoin has the status of alegal, since it has not been regulated in the country. This option of donations will also have a specialized company for the verification of the transaction and the identity of the donor.
In fact, money laundering is an issue that worries the candidate and, in general, the international authorities. However, Toro added that the Federal Election Commission in the United States recognizes donations with bitcoin since 2014 and that this shows the regulatory backwardness in technological advances in Colombia.
On the other hand, the United States has been one of the places where more politicians have resorted to this type of donations. Such is the case of Patrick Nelson, candidate for congressman of the 21st district of New York, who announced in August of last year that he would accept donations in bitcoin for his campaign. And this month, the Republican candidate for the State Senate of Missouri, Austin Petersen, received the largest donation in BTC ever made in the political history of the United States.