US senator Ted Cruz has officially begun accepting Bitcoin for his senate campaign donations, according to his official website, with Bitcoin payments firm OpenNode facilitating the transactions. Payments to the campaign can either be made on-chain or via lightning network transactions.
Ted Cruz for Senate
Cruz has been a very vocal proponent of Bitcoin in the senate over the last few years, especially when it comes to the energy front, where he says the Bitcoin industry “is generating enormous benefits for Texas, for the country.”
The senator seemingly wants to help lead a charge on educating and bringing more Bitcoin awareness to his colleges in office, alerting that he has “real concern when it comes to congress,” because he serves “in the U.S. senate, a body where I’m not sure we have 5 senators that can tell you what the hell a Bitcoin is.”
This past April, the sitting senator attempted to bring more BTC awareness to DC as he featured in a fireside chat at the Bitcoin Policy Summit, revealing that he owns “a little more than 2 bitcoin, and every Monday I own a little bit more…I am incredibly bullish on Bitcoin specifically.”
Cruz joins a growing list of US politicians starting to accept Bitcoin for campaign donations in 2023. Earlier this year, presidential candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Vivek Ramaswamy both starting accepting BTC also through OpenNode for campaign donations.