Arizona state Senator Wendy Rogers has reintroduced a bill aimed at making Bitcoin a legal tender in the state, allowing state agencies to accept the digital currency as a form of payment.
If passed, the bill would make Arizona the first state in the United States to officially recognize Bitcoin as a legal form of currency.
The bill has been co-sponsored by other Republican Party leaders from Arizona. In announcing the bill’s launch, the lawmaker cited a recent report by Goldman Sachs indicating that Bitcoin is the best-performing asset in 2023.
However, the bill’s passage remains uncertain as the United States Constitution does not allow individual states to create their own legal tender.
The bill defines Bitcoin as “the decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency in which a record of transactions is maintained on the Bitcoin blockchain, and new units of currency are generated by the computational solution of mathematical problems, and that operates independently of a central bank.”
If the bill is recognized as law, it will allow state agencies to enter into agreements with cryptocurrency issuers to accept Bitcoin as a payment method for taxes, fines, and fees.
This is the second time that Senator Rogers has attempted to introduce such legislation, with the first attempt made in January 2022 but it did not pass the second reading.
The reintroduction of the bill highlights the growing interest of lawmakers in the cryptocurrency space and comes at a time when there is renewed debate on the sector’s regulations.
