INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Starting Monday, businesses in Ohio will be able to pay their taxes in bitcoin — making the state that high in the middle and round on
both ends the first in the nation to accept cryptocurrency officially.
Companies who want to take part in the program simply need to go to
OhioCrypto.comand register to pay whatever taxes their corporate hearts desire in crypto
It could be anything from cigarette sales taxes to employee withholding taxes, according to a report inThe Wall Street Journal, which first
noted the initiative.
The brain child of current Ohio state treasurer, Josh Mandel, the bitcoin program is intended to be a signal of the
state broader ambitions to remake itself in a more tech-friendly image.
Already, Ohio has something of a technology hub forming in Columbus,
Ohio, home to one of the largest venture capital funds in the midwest, Drive Capital
And Cleveland (the city once called &the mistake on the lake&) is trying to remake itself in cryptocurrency image with a new drive to
rebrand the city as &Blockland&.
Whether anyone will look to take advantage of Ohio newfound embrace of digital currencies is debatable.
The
cryptocurrency market is currently in the kind of free-fall (or collapse, or implosion, or conflagration, or all-consuming dumpster fire)
that usually reserved for tulips in Holland in February 1637.
Bitcoin sinks below $4,000 as the crypto market takes another hefty
beating
Other states around the country in the southeast, southwest and midwest also considered accepting bitcoin for taxes, but those
initiatives in places like Arizona, Georgia, and Illinois never got past state legislatures.
The state is working with the cryptocurrency
payment startup BitPay to handle its payments, which will convert the bitcoin to dollars.
