Warren Davidson, a member of the United States House of Representatives from Ohio’s 8th congressional district has been vocal about Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry in general. He is leading legislative efforts to bring regulatory clarity to space including the Token Taxonomy Act introduced last year.
However, Rep. Davidson has revealed in a recent interview with Unchained that though he sees the potential in Bitcoin as a store of value like gold, he doesn’t hold the cryptocurrency, owing to personal reasons.
“I view bitcoin personally kind of like digital gold versus a true currency. I think it’s a great store of value,” he said in the interview, before revealing that currently, he doesn’t own any unit of BTC.
He also explained the reason, which according to him is more morally-based than technically.
“I think given the role in how vocal I’ve been as a legislator about the space. That it would be inappropriate for me to do so, though not technically a violation of the rules,” Congressman Warren Davidson clarified.
He also shared his thoughts about the advantage of the cryptocurrency system in maintaining the value of a holder’s currency, using the recent Payroll Protection Plan as a case study.
The Payroll Protection Plan/Program is an SBA (Small Business Administration) loan that helps businesses keep their workforce employed during the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis to stabilize the economy.
The funding for the program was not really a loan but was additional currency printed by the federal government in the central bank. The program helped to drastically reduce the number of unemployment from the peak and has kept many people in their payroll but at the same time, it has diluted the assets of the American citizens.
In contrast, the devaluation of currency value is an impossibility with Bitcoin since there is a limit of 21 million units in circulation, and more than that cannot be created.
When asked if he trusts the Bitcoin system more due to its programmed monetary policy, Warren Davidson explained that the Bitcoin system is not as flexible as the central bank because, in a situation like the COVID-19 crisis, more units of Bitcoin cannot be mined to stabilize the economy.
In the same line of thought, he labeled the popular idea in the crypto world and among Bitcoin fans that the central bank can continue to print and print money without consequence as a fallacious argument, pointing to history as evidence that the devaluation of money comes with a consequence.
