Key Takeaways:
- Colorado Governor Jared Schutz Polis has announced that his state will begin accepting Bitcoin for tax payments starting this summer.
- Polis reveals plans for the US State to advance further in more untested payment models and his vision for a potential state token in an interview with CNBC.
Colorado Governor Jared Schutz Polis has just announced that his state will begin accepting Bitcoin for tax payments starting this summer. Polis reveals plans for the US State to advance further in more untested payment models and his vision for a potential state token in an interview with CNBC. Governor Jared Polis has long been a supporter of cryptocurrency, and as a congressman, he was the first US politician to accept Bitcoin campaign donations.
Polis said that “We expect by this summer, pretty soon, to accept crypto for all of our state tax-related purposes. Then we plan to roll that out across all of state government for things like, could be as simple as driver’s license or hunting license within a few months after that.”
The governor also stated that he was “not at all” concerned about the potential volatility of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) because the state had no plans to HODL the coins and would convert the funds immediately. Polis cited lower transaction costs as a reason for the state’s potential adoption of crypto payments, as well as the prospect of promoting a new asset class.
Christine Lee sits down with Gov. Jared Polis for a wide-ranging discussion about the state’s blockchain initiatives as ETHDenver, one of the largest gatherings of the Ethereum blockchain community, gets underway in Denver. In addition to accepting crypto payments for taxes by this summer, a plan he announced at the 2021 CoinDesk Consensus conference, the governor discusses several blockchain initiatives he supports to modernize government infrastructure, affecting services from agriculture to digital citizenship.
Colorado aspires to be the first state to allow residents to pay their taxes in cryptocurrency. “I’d be thrilled to be the first state to let you pay your taxes in a variety of cryptos,” Polis said in an interview at Coindesk’s Consensus 2021 virtual conference. He further added, “Colorado is and will be the center for blockchain innovation in the United States, attracting investments and good jobs and innovators in infrastructure, digital identity, [and] individual data security in the private and public sector.”
