Belgian MP receives Bitcoin salary for a year: Here’s what he learned
At the end of January 2022, member of the Belgian parliament Christophe De Beukelaer became the first European politician to convert his salary to Bitcoin (BTC). Celebrating the anniversary of this experiment, Cointelegraph reached out to a lawmaker to know more about his experience.
Back in 2022, Beukelaer, who represents Humanist Democratic Centre (CDH) party, cited the example of New York City Mayor Eric Adams and how American politicians are working to make their native states or cities Bitcoin hubs to justify his decision. The Brussels MP’s monthly salary of 5,500 euros ($6,140) was to be converted to Bitcoin using the Bit4You crypto trading platform.
Related: Belgium says BTC, ETH and other decentralized coins are not securities
“I did this political act of paying in Bitcoin to defend political ideas,” shares Beukelaer, citing four ones: defending financial freedom and economic opportunity and combating financial illiteracy and growth model. The last one is perhaps the most interesting, as the lawmaker, who’s calling himself a “pragmatic environmentalist,” sees a clear link between Bitcoin and the environmental clause:
“What does the central bank do when it prints money as it has done in recent years? It gives the illusion of infinite resources and thus encourages all economic actors to produce and consume more and more.”
Beukelaer considers his experiment successful in both putting Belgium on the global crypto map and encouraging local officials to educate themselves on digital assets:
Was it comfortable in practical terms? The positive answer is hardly imaginable, given the BTC’s decline from almost $38,000 in January 2022 to $17,246 at the time of publication in January 2023, but the MP didn’t regard his experiment
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