RFK Jr wants to put US budget on blockchain

Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is running as an Independent in the 2024 presidential race, said he wants to put the «US budget on blockchain,» the technology used by Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to keep track of transactions.

“I’m going to put the entire US budget on blockchain so that any American — every American can look at every budget item in the entire budget anytime they want 24 hours a day,” Mr Kennedy said on Sunday during a rally in Michigan, The Hill reports.

While Mr Kennedy's plan would theoretically provide a greater amount of transparency to the national budget, moving the totality of the nation's spending to the blockchain would likely be a daunting task. In December 2022, the Office of Management and Budget gave federal agencies a deadline of June 2024 to fully digitise their records, as many offices still use paper documents, according to FedScoop.

The other problem with Mr Kennedy's plan is that it is a solution to a non-existent problem; the federal budget is already public, as federal spending is tracked and documented in the public record.

“We’re gonna have 300 million eyeballs on our budget, and if somebody is spending $16,000 for a toilet seat, everybody’s gonna know about it,” Mr Kennedy said.

Mr Kennedy has already stated he wants to back the US dollar with Bitcoin rather than its current fiat value, and he has accepted campaign donations in Bitcoin over the last year.

While he is a proponent of modern digital currencies, he has opposed a central bank digital currency, something that the Federal Reserve is «exploring».

A central bank digital currency, or CBDC, would essentially create a new currency, controlled by the Federal Reserve, for use in digital transactions by a nation’s citizens.