Calls for Bitcoin to be legalized as money and not taxed, has been made by former presidential candidate and Congressman Ron Paul.
Having advocated for the legalization of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the past, Paul is a staunch libertarian and author of the Bitcoiner favorite “End the Fed,”
Aim against the Federal Reserve for its unchecked money printing since the pandemic began, has always been taken by the former congressman.
Ahead of his appearance at the Miami Bitcoin conference on June 3, the 85 year-old spoke with streaming financial news provider Kitco News and noted that his goal is to “help legalize the competition, and then I think the people will sort it out. Freedom of choice will sort it out.”
The former congressman described gold and Bitcoin as money and “competition” to the U.S. Dollar — and highlighted that a major reason investors seek out such alternative forms of money is to hedge against the declining value of the U.S dollar.
Paul believes that for this reason, “alternate forms of money” should be taxed the same as fiat currency:
“Right now, if you buy and sell gold, you get it taxed, they can do that. If you make a profit in Bitcoin, you read stories about people being taxed on it. You can’t tax money, you don’t tax it. If you bought a dollar a year ago and it went down 10%, you can’t take a loss because your dollar lost value.”
Paul believes that U.S. regulatory bodies are moving to regulate and further tax Bitcoin because it’s competing with the U.S. dollar, and noted that governments throughout history have been “notoriously very eager to have control of the money,” and predicted they “will never give up control.”
“But I would apply that same concern to gold, because you know, what was the first thing Roosevelt did in 1933? He immediately took all the gold from the people,” he said.