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Bitcoin Companies are Hiring Lobbyists

Bitcoin companies are hiring lobbyists, visiting lawmakers on Capitol Hill and writing to agencies about how they should write rules that will determine the future of the fast-growing virtual currency.

It's all part of a push to shape how Washington ultimately regulates the independent, digital money that is growing in popularity.

"The most important thing we're doing is explaining how Bitcoin works," said Jim Harper, a lobbyist who was hired recently as counsel for the Bitcoin Foundation, an organization that represents Bitcoin companies and investors. Harper, who has lobbied for PayPal and VeriSign, is paid in bitcoin.

The timing is ripe.

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Computer Security, Cyberwarfare Firms Being Attracted to Washington DC

Washington D.C. business leaders like venture capitalist Jonathan Aberman want to make the D.C. region a more attractive place for tech start-ups as the U.S. government — specifically the military – increases its spending on tech innovation and cybersecurity.

Defense Department leaders have said cybersecurity poses one of the top threats to the U.S. military and these generals are backing it up with their spending. Cybersecurity is one of the few areas where the U.S. military will spend more this year as their overall budget is cut. The Defense Department will spend $4.7 billion on cyber operations this year – a 21 percent increase over 2013.

Overall, the cybersecurity industry receives about $80 billion in government spending and more than $300 billion in spending within the private sector. Those numbers are expected to expand as it is estimated that cyber theft costs as much as $400 billion in economic losses per year.

This is good news for tech entrepreneurs like Anup Ghosh, who is the type of innovator that D.C. wants to keep in the region rather than see him and his company head to California.

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The Ukrainian Struggle, Euromaidan Pull out the Big Guns...Washington Lobbyists

Rival political factions facing each other on the streets of Ukraine have also enlisted heavyweight lobbyists in Washington, some with connections at the highest levels of U.S. government, to promote their causes to American policymakers, media and members of Congress.

Among the high-profile lobbyists registered to represent organizations backing Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich's government are prominent Democratic lobbyist Anthony Podesta and former Republican congressional leaders Vin Weber and Billy Tauzin.

Meanwhile, Yanukovich's most prominent political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister who is serving a seven-year prison term for alleged abuse of power, is represented in Washington by former Democratic Congressman Jim Slattery, a partner in the law firm Wiley Rein LLP.

The sums of money involved are substantial. Over the last two years, the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a Brussels-based organization sympathetic to Yanukovich and his political party, has paid $560,000 to Weber's firm, Mercury, and another $900,000 to Podesta Group Inc, for a total outlay of $1.46 million, according to a U.S. Senate database.

The database shows total payments over the same two years of $810,000 to Wiley Rein by Oleksandr Tymoshenko, a Ukrainian businessman and husband of Yulia.

"A lot of people are making a lot of money off Ukraine's political competition," said Bruce Jackson, president of the Project on Transitional Democracies, which advocates Western-oriented reforms in Eastern Europe.

"The Yulia-Yanukovich competition has definitely spilled out of the country. Both sides are heavily invested in representation in Washington," Jackson said. He said he and his group do not lobby.

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