TL;DR Breakdown

• Wyoming State Senator bought  Bitcoin (BTC) worth roughly $100,000 from River Financial.
• She made the purchase a few days after pushing a far-reaching amendment to the infrastructure bill.

Vocal crypto-leaning legislator, Senator Cynthia Lummis, confirms she’s recently acquired Bitcoin (BTC) worth an estimated $50,000 and $ 1000,000.  River Financial, a leading brokerage firm, facilitated the Senator’s latest purchase.

The Senator revealed this information in a Periodic Transaction Report (PTR) filing on Thursday, 7th October. According to her PTR record, the Republican lawmaker states that she acquired the said crypto on August 16th. At the time of her buying, BTC was trading at around $45,000.

Lumiss had missed STOCK’s deadline

Sen. Lummis filed the PTR in compliance with The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act. Additionally, her disclosure happened after the forty-five-day reporting period that the act sets had passed. STOCK aims at curbing insider trading and became law following President Barack Obama’s accent in 2012.

STOCK requires senators and senior staff earning more than $ 119,550 to publish transactions that it covers. These cover acquisitions, sales, and transfers of commodities futures, stocks, and bonds. Again, they must declare trading on securities above $ 1,000.

Additionally, STOCK excludes some assets from this mandatory forty-five-day requirement. These include mutual funds, Treasury bills, and Enhanced Index Funds (EIFs). Holders of these assets must only disclose them once annually. These differing reporting timelines emphasize disclosing trades that people could benefit from by using privileged information.

Her office affirmed that an error caused the late filing. The Senator’s spokesperson further revealed they’d sought the help of the House Ethics Committee to correct that lapse. Moreover, Sen. Lummis had managed to clear the matter and avoid penalties.

Lummis has had a long running relationship with crypto

Lummis’ involvement with crypto goes back to when she worked at the helm of Wyoming’s Treasury Department. While serving in that position, she claims that she sought “something that could serve as a superior store of value.” At some point, her son-in-law and his friends enlightened her about BTC’s potential as a store of value.

This information prompted her to jump onto the BTC bandwagon. Then, the cryptocurrency was trading at about $330. She has since 2013 been buying it. Before July, she’d disclosed that she held five BTCs.

Lummis’ crypto ownership has courted public attention before. In April this year, she submitted her PTR to the house but excluded her  BTC holdings. A few days later, she amended those submissions to include holdings of BTC worth $ 100,000-$200,000.

In recent years, her home state has also enacted laws supportive of the crypto industry. These regulations include permitting banks under full US regulation to deal in both fiat money and cryptocurrencies.

A vocal BTC advocate, Lummis criticized stablecoins during her presentations in the Senate last week. She insisted that they need to have the full backing of cash besides undergoing regular auditing. The lawmaker expressed her concerns that cryptos pegged 1:1 to other sovereign fiat currencies lacked clear accountability.

Lummis made her BTC purchase less than a fortnight after she and other legislators failed to amend the infrastructure bill. The amendment sought to define who qualifies as a crypto broker. 

It also proposed protection for those who didn’t qualify as brokers per the amendment’s definition. 

She won the hearts of crypto insiders despite the Senate shooting down the amendment.