US State Wants to Lead in Crypto Acceptance — Colorado to Accept Crypto for Tax Payments This Summer

The U.S. state of Colorado is preparing to accept cryptocurrency for tax payments, said Governor Jared Polis. “We expect to accept crypto by this summer,” he said, adding that after tax payments, crypto will be accepted for other things like driver’s licenses or hunting licenses.

Colorado to Accept Crypto for Tax Payments

The governor of the U.S. state of Colorado, Jared Polis, talked about his state’s efforts to become the leader in cryptocurrency acceptance in an interview with CNBC Tuesday.

Regarding his state accepting cryptocurrency for tax payments, he said: “We expect by this summer — pretty soon — to accept crypto for all of our state tax-related purposes, and then we plan to roll that out across all of state governments for things like … driver’s license or hunting license, within a few months after that.” He reiterated:

The biggest set of transactions are the taxes that people pay. We expect to accept crypto by this summer.

However, the governor clarified: “It’s important that people know from the state perspective that we cannot be in the business of having exposure to a market where securities, including cryptocurrencies, fluctuate. Our expenses are in dollars … All of our expenses are in dollars. Our budgets are approved by legislators in dollars.”

He emphasized: “When we talked about accepting crypto for payments, they will be converted back into dollars for our purpose, so there will be an intermediary there that would convert them for our purposes back to dollars.”

The governor was also asked whether he is worried about the volatility of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and whether it affects the state’s plan.

‘Not at all,” the governor promptly replied.

“In our case, we wouldn’t hold it as bitcoin, as ethereum. We would not hold it as an asset class. It would be paid and converted in real time to the way that we do our accounting, still,” he continued, reiterating:

Our budget is approved and our expenses are incurred in dollars. It would really be converted at the moment it is paid … just like accepting a credit card but with a much lower transaction cost than a credit card.