"We want members of Congress to know that we'll be watching them and
that we won't let them hide from their positions on this," said Evan
Greer.
Digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future has publicly
called out Alabama lawmaker Richard Shelby for preventing an amendment
clarifying the role of crypto in the infrastructure bill to be addressed
in the United States Senate.
Fight for the Future has used
donations it received in cryptocurrency to place a billboard in
Birmingham, Alabama asking lawmakers not to support measures it believes
would harm crypto and blockchain firms. Shelby, one of two senators
representing Alabama since 1987, objected to the introduction of a crypto amendment to infrastructure bill HR 3684 that was under consideration in the Senate at the time.
“Senator
Shelby's constituents deserve to know that he derailed the [crypto]
amendment just to stroke his own ego and demand more money for war,”
Fight for the Future director Evan Greer told Cointelegraph. “We want to
show elected officials that it is simply not okay to be ignorant about
issues like decentralized technology and cryptocurrency.”
As it
stands now, the infrastructure bill suggests implementing tighter rules
on businesses handling cryptocurrencies and expanding reporting
requirements for brokers, mandating that digital asset transactions
worth more than $10,000 are reported to the Internal Revenue Service.
Several senators worked together to propose an amendment
aimed at exempting software developers, transaction validators and node
operators as brokers while suggesting that tax reporting requirements
“only apply to the intermediaries.”
However, Senate lawmakers did
not allow Shelby to add his own amendment to the bill, which would have
added $50 billion in defense funding in addition to the roughly $1
trillion for roads, bridges and major infrastructure projects. The
Alabama senator later claimed he supported the crypto amendment, but prioritized defense spending.
Related: Stricter crypto laws will stifle innovation, says SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce
The
infrastructure bill will now go to the House of Representatives, where
lawmakers passed a nonbinding resolution to vote on the measure by Sept.
27. Several House members have already said
they are in favor of amending the provisions on crypto in the bill, but
according to Fight for the Future, representative Brad Sherman is one
of the few voices opposing such an amendment — the lawmaker has previously called for a complete ban on cryptocurrencies in the United States.
Greer added:
“There
will be a number of opportunities in the coming months for the House of
Representatives to fix the problematic crypto provision that was
included in the infrastructure bill. We want members of Congress to know
that we'll be watching them and that we won't let them hide from their
positions on this.”
source link : https://cointelegraph.com/news/don-t-kill-crypto-billboard-goes-up-in-alabama-in-advance-of-house-tackling-infrastructure
