A section of US Democrat and Republican congressmen now agree to something about cryptocurrencies: the need for them, as lawmakers, to know more about what it is. According to U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney, most of the lawmakers do not know the difference between bitcoin and the blockchain technology hence the formation of the bipartisan Blockchain Caucus last month to help their colleagues stay up to speed on evolving digital currency and blockchain technologies, and develop policies that advance them. “…we really started this caucus as a sort of way to introduce our colleagues and their staff members to what this technology is so that when they start to hear more and more about it, and they will start to hear more about it, that they have good information as we start to talk about things we can do in terms of government policies,” Mulvaney told Bloomberg in a live interview about the caucus – or the congressional member organization – he co-founded with Jared Polis, a Democrat from Colorado. “We don’t care what you think about bitcoin – you like it or you don’t like it, the underlying distributed ledger technology is real and its potentials exist far beyond its application in the financial services. That’s what we’ve been trying to introduce folks to.” CMOs are usually set up to pursue common legislative objectives. They can also help get other legislators up to speed on a subject in the hopes of formulating future laws that affect that niche. Whether this particular group would be able to wield much influence is yet to be determined but it sure seems to be a good initiative for the cryptocurrency movement. Mulvaney and Polis also are working with the Coin Center , a Washington-based nonprofit that focuses on digital currency technology, to help […]
