Thanks Isaac,

I have a very positive attitude towards bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, I don’t support excessive central planning or restrictions on the use of currencies and see bitcoin and other such tokens as a way that citizens can transact without using government issued fiat currencies.

My party – The Liberal Democrats, has a position that cryptocurrencies should be classified as currencies and therefore the tax implications would be the same as FX trading rather than being subject to CGT in the way that securities are. This would encourage businesses to accept cryptocurrency payments, and consumers to use cryptocurrencies in this way.

Regarding donations, my own campaign is self-funded and I am not taking donations, but due to the complexities of accounting we unfortunately do not currently accept bitcoin donations, not on the grounds of principle though!

Regarding your third point the party (and just about every other political party it seems) doesn’t yet have a detailed set of policies that would answer this question, I do recognise the massive differences in use cases between certain cryptocurrencies, some are used as a payment system, some are pegged to fiat currencies or assets like gold, some are basically just securities, and then you have others like Ethereum which are attempting to effectively compete with the current centralised financial system. My personal thought is that if a more detailed set of policies were drawn up I would be advocating for more nuance between these various types of assets, and that’s before you begin to consider staking rewards and other added complexities.

I hope this response is useful and informative for you, I suspect I would be one of if not the most pro-cypto candidate in my race.

Regards, Max

Max Payne
Liberal Democrats Candidate for Corio
Max.payne@ldp.org.au
0433 119 323