Presidential candidate Rand Paul graced the 19th April Bitcoin event held at the Union League Club and left the attendees highly impressed with his thoughts on the cryptocurrency. The event was hosted by the Bitcoin Center NYC and a start-up incubator Blockchain Technologies Corp.
Rand Paul is the running the first presidential campaign ever to accept Bitcoin in donations.
Since the event was not publicly promoted by the campaign management team, the remarks from the events will not be released, said Sergio Gor, spokesperson for Paul’s campaign. However, the social media was abuzz with details regarding the event.
An attendee Paul Hanson @PaulHansonNY tweeted on April 20, 2015: “Rand was brief but on-point in his remarks. Very exciting to see our next president in person.” Another twitter user Avishai/Jacob Cohen @vichispeaks tweeted one of Paul’s event remarks: “I’m open to technology, I’m open to innovation.”
On being quizzed about Bitcoin regulation and national security, Paul said, “Important to keep innovation in US.”
Prior to Paul’s speech, Austin Alexander, co-founder of the Bitcoin Center, utilized the occasion to express his opposition to the state’s BitLicense regulatory proposal. He suggested that Bitcoin and the technology behind it will benefit immensely if the regulatory authorities decided to adopt a hands-off approach. He cited the period of early Internet when regulators adopted a similar stance, and let Internet survive itself, even as several politicians demanded a clamp down on the usage of the revolutionary service.
Before talking about the digital currency, the Kentucky senator addressed a separate audience of donors who had donated the maximum permissible amount of $2,700 to his campaign.
Apart from Bitcoin, Paul also touched upon key issues plaguing the country. His particular emphasis on ending NSA spying drew high praise from the attendees.