The Texas Senator, Rafael ‘Ted’ Cruz, who has always been talking a big game now has something to show for it. This junior Republican senator from Texas has put his money where his mouth is. Based on a financial disclosure that was filed on February 4, Cruz acquired between $15k and $50k worth of Bitcoin on January 25, using the River brokerage.
At that time, BTC was trading between $36k and $37k and since then it has risen to trade around $41,500 currently. Assuming that he has not sold his bitcoins and incurred any near-term capital gains taxes, his current profit on the transaction is in the region of $2,000 to $6,850.
Following the lead of fellow Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Cruz spent most of the latter half of the cryptocurrency Bull Run aligning himself with the crypto and blockchain sector, with his state benefiting from an influx of Bitcoin mining firms and interest in the subject of this nascent technology became highly widespread.
He has even advocated for the adoption of crypto payments at vending machines and gift shops in the United States Capitol complex and opposed a provision in the recent infrastructure bill that critics believe would extend the definition of a ‘broker’ to miners, and possibly even coders and validators.
As the cold spell rapidly engulfs the state of Texas, some of the crypto miners slowed or stopped operations to help in protecting the state’s energy grid network that failed during a prolonged freeze last year. Ted Cruz was conspicuously absent for part of that time since he was visiting the Mexican resort of Cancún.
Buy Bitcoin NowRiver Financial is a company licensed in several US states, but it does not note a Texas Money Transmitter license on its site. Based on the Texas Department of Banking guidance on Virtual Currencies, but:
“No currency exchange license is required in Texas to conduct any type of transaction exchanging virtual with sovereign currencies.”
Several Members of Congress, including Democrats Marie Newman of Illinois and Jake Auchinloss of Massachusetts, and Republicans Barry Moore of Alabama and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, have revealed holdings in crypto and related stocks.
