On Wednesday, lawmakers in North Carolina passed a bill for funding a study focused on precious metals and digital assets.
This is because they are exploring the possibility of investing in Bitcoin and gold for bolstering the coffers of the southern state.
The bill
The bill was able to clear the House of Representatives in North Carolina and is now advancing to the Senate.
If the state’s Senate greenlights the bill, then Governor Roy Cooper would sign it into law. It had first been introduced back in April.
The bill was sponsored by Republican Mark Brody and the state representative said that this was a step forward in protecting the state’s assets.
He said that a number of people in the precious metals and crypto world were aware that the US government was devaluing the county’s currency consistently.
According to the bill, the study is aimed at assessing how the General Fund of North Carolina would benefit from holding precious metals and digital assets.
Essentially, they want to know how the bank account of the state would be able to get better returns over time, reduce their portfolio volatility and hedge against inflation.
According to the bill, a potential reason for holding gold and Bitcoin would be the systematic credit risks.
The study
The study would also focus on examining how precious metals and digital assets can be acquired by the state, held securely and then liquidated when needed.
Another area of focus of the study would be aimed at assessing if they should create an institution administered by the state for maintaining the custody of assets like BTC and gold.
According to Brody, they had worked with Dan Spuller, who is the head of affairs of an advocacy group of the crypto industry, the Blockchain Association, due to which they had shifted their focus to digital assets.
Spuller had advocated for adding digital assets in the study earlier this month when he had appeared in front of state lawmakers.
Additional details
Brody revealed that the original bill had been intended to assess the idea of buying gold, but once they began talking about it, they did not know how to make a decision.
This prompted them to initiate the study first. A bill had previously been co-sponsored by Brody to outlaw payments in the state made via central bank digital currency (CBDC).
Back in May, the North Carolina House had approved the bill and this had made it one of the various states that were joining the ban with Florida.
On Wednesday, there were 67 Republican members who had been present in the House and they had given their approval for the bill aimed at conducting a study on gold and Bitcoin.
In fact, the bill had also gotten the green light from 6 Democrats, but most of the Democrats were against the bill, as it received 40 negative votes.
The bill dictates that in order to conduct the study, a sum of $50,000 would be set aside and the findings and any recommendations related to policy would be reported at the beginning of next year.