American presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has proposed putting the 2024 national budget on a public blockchain.
At his April 21 meeting in Michigan, Kennedy said putting the U.S. budget on the blockchain would give Americans access to every budget item at any time.
According to Kennedy, integrating the budget with blockchain technology will significantly increase transparency. He illustrated this by saying, “If someone spends $16,000 on a toilet seat, everyone will know about it.”
If the proposal becomes a reality, American taxpayers will be able to track where the money is being spent. The idea was well received by some parts of the cryptocurrency community, with some claiming it would put an end to corruption.
“Putting the entire US budget on blockchain would be transformative. I don’t believe in silver bullets, but this is as close as I can get,” one X user wrote.
Another user pointed out that “public accounting may be the best use case for blockchain technology,” besides supply chain implementations.
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However, some critics of this idea argue that Kennedy is using this proposal to promote his central bank digital currency (CBDC) agenda. According to X user Jeremiah Harding, it is not possible for a government to keep track of all budget transactions without implementing “another currency” such as a CBDC.
Interestingly, Kennedy, a prominent advocate for decentralization, has previously expressed concerns about the launch of a CBDC in the US. In January 2024, he described a CBDC as “a disaster for human rights and for civil rights.”
Kennedy is also one of the few presidential candidates who has publicly endorsed Bitcoin. Last year at the Bitcoin 2023 conference in Miami, he announced that his campaign would accept Bitcoin (BTC) donations. The presidential candidate also revealed that he bought Bitcoin the same year.
Despite being endorsed by some regulators, cryptocurrencies are still a hot topic worldwide. Blockchain technology, on the other hand, has seen implementations in a variety of ways across the public sector, and regulators have been open-minded in their approach.
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