Ireland’s ministry of housing, the Local Government and Heritage, is in the process of writing potential rules to ban political parties from accepting donations in bitcoin (BTC) and any other cryptocurrencies.
In January, a task force was set up by local government minister Darragh O'Brien to recommend laws to maintain electoral integrity.
O’Brien has orchestrated previous elections and overseen voting reform. His specific concern is protecting the country from cyber-attacks and any repercussions from Ukraine’s invasion of Russia.
The task force provided a “comprehensive set of recommendations to build a legal and digital bulwark against malign interference in our elections”, according to O’Brien.
Hackers are a big concern for Ireland, especially after the 2016 election when ads on the popular social media site Facebook were bought by Russians in an attempt to hound the US political infrastructure by posing as Americans.
Further on in 2020, Russian hackers again attempted and succeeded in breaking into several country government databases, in some instances gaining access to electoral data, but not altering its findings.
This caused the US Treasury Department to sanction all cryptocurrency addresses that were thought to be used by Russia to forgo any further attacks.
The new rules will be enforced by a newly elected Electoral Commission.
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