The US Federal Election Commission (FEC) has ruled that the US politicians can accept Bitcoin as legal political contributions, though not anonymously. The FEC decided that politicians and political action committees, independent groups without their own contributions capped, are allowed to accept Bitcoin. Such donations are supposed to be treated like other in-kind donations – stocks and shares, for instance.

In other words, groups and individuals accepting the cybercurrency will have to convert it into American dollars and deposit them into a campaign account instead of spending the currency directly. However, in this case the popular anonymity of Bitcoin won’t help the American politicians, as the FEC still requires donors to list information including their names, addresses and occupations before making donations.

The Commission’s decision was made in response to a request by a political action committee called Make Your Laws. The latter campaigns to replace representative democracy with a so-called “liquid democracy”, where people are deeper involved with the legislative process.

Make Your Laws had also asked to allow to spend Bitcoins directly, but the Commission refused. The decision said that the FEC concluded the MYL may accept and purchase Bitcoins, but political action committees (Pacs) must sell the cybercurrency it purchase and deposit the proceeds into their campaign depository before spending the money. At the same time, the Federal Election Commission failed to approve a response by the required 4 affirmative votes as to whether the Pac may acquire goods and services with cybercurrency received as contributions.

Since the FEC only ruled on the specific request that a certain political action committee had made, it set the only explicit limit on donations in cybercurrebncy at $100 – this is the amount Make Your Laws decided to cap donations at. There are still debates on whether larger donations could be made for US candidates.

Finally, the FEC decision also doesn’t explicitly address other crypto-currencies, like Litecoin or Dogecoin. However, the ruling itself does set a precedent. It is known that the Dogecoin community, for example, has a particularly active charitable sector. They raise money to clean water in Kenya, send the Jamaican bobsleigh team to the Winter Olympics, and to sponsor an up-and-coming Nascar driver.