Alert: Governor Burgum Should Veto HB 1082

HB 1082 is a generally bland bill, however a provision relating to crypto-currency may have negative effects on the state's efforts to diversify into that industry.

House Bill 1082 is a bill I have not covered up to this point in the session, it relates to amending the Century Code as relates to the Uniform Commercial Code. Typically a very boring and regular bill. (It has already passed both the House and Senate and is headed for the Governor’s desk.)

But this time around, HB 1082 has provisions relating to crypto-currency and “Central Bank Digital Currency”, which relates to the concept of the government creating its own crypto-currency and essentially making private independent crypto-currencies illegal (government hates competition).

I don’t know much about crypto-currency, not many legislators do either.

What I do know is that Governor Kristi Noem in South Dakota vetoed this provision earlier this year:

“First, by expressly excluding cryptocurrencies as money, it would become more difficult to use cryptocurrency. By needlessly limiting this freedom, HB1193 would put South Dakota citizens at a business disadvantage,” it said.

Her second reason is that treating CBDCs as money “opens the door to the risk that the federal government could more easily adopt a CBDC, which then may become the only viable digital currency.”

The governor’s letter notes that a government-backed digital currency hasn’t been created at this time. “It would be imprudent to create regulations governing something that does not yet exist. More importantly, South Dakota should not open the door to a potential future overreach by the federal government,” the letter says.

Here is the link to Governor Noem’s veto letter.

I also know that Governor Burgum’s plan to make North Dakota a center of the crypto-universe would probably not be helped by this provision.

Conservative groups like The Heritage Foundation are also opposing these bills:

While we many not agree with the subsidizing this approach with special incentives, it certainly would make no sense to sign a bill that would make North Dakota unattractive for the crypto-industry.

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Governor Burgum should veto HB 1082 immediately and request that the legislature provide a bill that removes these provisions that would put North Dakota in a position of not being attractive for these sorts of industries.

How can North Dakota attract business and investment by treating everything "out-of-state" as evil?

Public money should not be put at risk supporting businesses and investments that most people don’t understand - nor should law be written to prevent such businesses from looking to set up shop in North Dakota.

Click here to contact the governor: https://www.governor.nd.gov/contact

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