On December 13, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) may consider whether allowing an individual volunteering to allow the processing power of his or her internet-enabled device to mine cryptocurrencies for the benefit a political committee would be considered a political contribution.

An advisory opinion request asks the FEC if a federal political committee could allow its individual supporters to volunteer the processing power of their internet-enabled devices to pool the processing power of these devices, which results in the mining of a “block.”

Mining allows transactions between users to be authenticated and generates a new cryptocurrency unit for the miner as a reward for creating the “block” and pays the miner a transaction fee. Creating blocks requires enormous amounts of computing power and can take years to generate a valid “block” by a single miner.

The FEC may consider Draft Advisory Opinion 2018-13 (Draft A) at its open meeting December 13, or hold it over for a future date.