“We will accept Bitcoin, we are working on doing that, for payments in the state of Florida. I’ve told the State agencies to figure out a way where if a business wants to pay tax in crypto to Florida, we should be willing to accept that.”
Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis said during a ceremony on Tuesday, March 22, during the signing of a bill to mandate high school financial literacy, classes.
DeSantis is a 46-year-old politician and attorney serving as the 46th Governor of Florida since 2019.
Before becoming the governor, he served as a member of the U.S House of Representatives for Florida and is expected to be a strong contender for the next Presidential election of the USA.
On behalf of the Republicans in case former president Donald Trump drops out of the nomination, this announcement in favor of cryptocurrency might bring the crypto community to his and the Republicans’ support.
DeSantis’ scepticism on Joe Biden’s plans for a state-owned digital currency
On March 9, President Biden signed an Executive order that called on the Federal agencies to research the feasibility of a government-launched U.S. digital currency.
In his reaction to that, DeSantis said: “There’s a difference between decentralized digital crypto like Bitcoin and what some are talking about doing at the Federal level to convert U.S. Dollars into basically a digital currency.
I think there are a lot of hazards with that when it’s centrally controlled. I worry about the amount of power that would give someone in a central authority to be able to shut off access to purchasing certain goods. We’d be in uncharted territory.”
Florida’s crypto friendliness
All along, Florida has been a strong supporter of the cryptocurrency movement. From June 3rd to 5th, the world’s largest Bitcoin conference will also be hosted in the Mana Convention Centre in Miami, Florida.
The convention is held every year, but this year it was postponed because of the covid travel restrictions around the world. Florida has many Bitcoin ATMs or kiosks and Florida’s economy is as strong as the whole Australian economy.
Francis Suarez, the Mayor of Miami, Florida, already accepts part of his salary in Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation. And he has even made the declaration that he will be the first politician in the USA to take his full salary in Bitcoin.
Miami has already courted exchanges like Blockchain.com in south Florida, and FTX which has secured naming rights to the Miami Heat Arena under the leadership of Mayor Suarez. According to Suarez, the Bitcoin Blockchain is the most verifiable and trustworthy network.
The adoption of crypto in the United States has expanded.
Another U.S. state, Colorado will allow individual tax payments in crypto later this year. Although the initiative has been taken earlier, the effect will take place from June.
The taxes will be payable in cryptocurrency equaling the value of the tax in USD, which will be exchanged for USD before it is deposited to the Treasury Department.
The states of Wyoming and Colorado both have passed pro-crypto legislation to promote themselves as crypto innovation hubs.
In 2018, the Seminole County Tax Office in Orlando started accepting cryptocurrency payments via BitPay, which ended afterward due to a lack of advanced system technologies.
As many of the Senators and big names are already into crypto and holding crypto, more and more of the U.S. states embracing crypto payments.
It’s a very understandable fact that cryptocurrency is not a secondary mode of payment anymore. It is a parallel mode of payments to the fiat currencies in this inflationary digital world of today.
