The Pennsylvania House of Representatives on Thursday passed the Digital Assets Authorization Act, a pro-crypto measure that prohibits “restriction on the use and custody of digital assets.” The bill had strong bipartisan support, passing by a margin of 176 votes to 26, with those voting in favor including 76 Democrats amd all 100 Republican members of the House.
The bill specifies that Pennsylvania residents can not be restricted from accepting crypto as a source of payment, nor from using a self-hosted or hardware wallet to hold their crypto. It also says that additional taxation “based solely on the use of the digital asset as a method of payment” is prohibited, and authorizes residents to operate nodes for connecting to a blockchain protocol or transferring a digital asset.
Nowhere in the text of the bill is the word “bitcoin” mentioned, although several news outlets and Satoshi Act Fund CEO Dennis Porter have referred to the bill as supporting bitcoin specifically. The Satoshi Act Fund is an advocacy organization that claims to have helped pass pro-crypto legislation in Montana, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.
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After Election Day, the bill goes to the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania state Senate, and if passed there, on to Governor Josh Shapiro for approval. The Senate is expected to support the bill, however, due to the overwhelming support from Republicans in the House.
Shapiro has not been particularly outspoken on crypto, though the word “cryptocurrency” was included in the definition of “money” in a state money transmission law reinterpreted by the Department of Banking and Securities in May of this year. Shapiro was also sued by an environmental group for implicitly backing bitcoin mining in April because tax credits that, on their face, were meant to support data centers have been utilized by the company Stronghold Digital Mining.
Cryptocurrency has become a key issue in the presidential race, with former president Donald Trump saying repeatedly that he wants America to be the “world leader” in cryptocurrency as well as meeting with bitcoin mining executives, launching a family-run DeFi project, and stating that he would like to hold bitcoin as a Federal Reserve asset.
For her part, Vice President Kamala Harris has said very little about her stance on cryptocurrency, primarily stating that she wants to “encourage” the digital asset industry. Harris is, however, rumored to be considering two potential picks for SEC chairperson that are more positive about crypto than the current Biden-appointed chair Gary Gensler, who is deeply unpopular in the industry.
Both Harris and Trump have been spending significant time campaigning in Pennsylvania, a critical swing swate where RealClearPolitics currently estimates Trump leads Harris by just 0.6 percentage points. Harris most recently spoke at a CNN town hall in Pennsylvania Wednesday evening, after Trump declined to participate in a debate. Trump spoke at his own rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania Saturday night.
