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Created Florida’s Blockchain Task Force under the Office of Financial Services. 13 Members were appointed by Governor Desantis, The President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, and the Chief Financial Officer.
SB 1024 passed both the House and Senate and signed was singed into law by the Governor. Went into effect upon being signed.
The Florida Blockchain Task Force met the following times: September 23, 2019, October 28, 2019, December 13, 2019, and February 21, 2020.
This Bill created the Florida Digital Service to deliver better government services through the implementation of transformative technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence, and other high tech solutions. All Web3 projects run by the State of FL will be run through this agency.
Created the Financial Technology Sandbox, within OFR, to allow innovators to test new products and services using exceptions of specified general law and waivers of the corresponding rule requirements under defined conditions in the consumer finance, payment instruments sellers, and money transmitter programs.
The Bill loosens Florida’s position on licensing requirements for virtual currency activity by clarifying that a money transmitter license is only required for persons acting as intermediaries between two parties if the intermediary has the unilateral ability to execute or prevent a transaction.
The goal of the unit is to develop and coordinate the regulatory policies required to provide Florida’s financial marketplace with stability, predictability, and security in the digital marketplace.
Prohibits the use of a federally adopted central bank digital currency (CBDC) and protects the personal finances of Floridians from government overreach and woke corporate monitoring.
Before diving into Bitcoin, let’s understand what money is. Money is something that holds value. For example, if you work for someone, they pay you money for your work. You can then use this money to buy things from others. Throughout history, many things like salt, wheat, shells, and gold have been used as money. For something to be considered money, people must trust that it’s valuable and will stay valuable over time.
In the past, people trusted physical things like gold to represent money. But carrying gold everywhere was hard, so paper money was created. Banks would keep your gold and give you paper notes (money) equal to the value of your gold. You could use these notes to buy things easily. Later, the link between paper money and gold was broken. Governments started to say that they would guarantee the value of paper money. This is how modern money, which we call fiat money, was created.
Fiat money is the money we use today, like dollars or euros. Its value comes from decree (fiat). The government and markets decide it has value.
Fiat money has THREE major problems:
Once we had fiat money, switching to digital money was easy. Most of our money is now digital, like in bank accounts, credit cards, or online services like PayPal. The amount of physical cash is getting smaller every year. But digital money has a problem called the “double spend problem.” It means someone could try to spend the same digital dollar twice. Banks solve this by keeping a record (ledger) of all transactions.
When one group (like a bank or government) controls money, it can lead to problems like corruption, mismanagement, and loss of control over your own money. For example, a government can print too much money, causing inflation, or they can freeze your bank account.
Bitcoin is decentralized, meaning it’s not stored on just one computer but on many. It’s also completely digital. Owning Bitcoin means having the right to transfer it, not holding a physical coin. It’s a type of money that no government or bank can control.
Bitcoin gives you full control over your money. It’s cheaper to use than traditional banking methods and can be programmed for more complex uses. It’s also accessible to people who don’t have access to traditional banks.
Many online and offline merchants now accept Bitcoin. Because there are no intermediaries the transaction fee is often far less than other forms of digital payments (credit cards for example). Additionally, since the transaction is fully settled, and can only be returned if the merchant agrees to a refund – many merchants prefer Bitcoin payments over conventional payments which are fraught with fraud and high transaction costs.
Bitcoin works by updating a ledger of transactions (blockchain) across many computers. You access your own assets on that ledger (blockchain) through your wallet, authorizing transactions. In the background a whole large, international economy of miners and node operators work to maintain the network and process transactions to ensure the network continues to operate. To date it’s never had a single moment of failure and has operated flawlessly for 14+ years – the largest and most successful computer and financial network ever to exist.
Just like other forms of money… money has value because people believe it can be exchanged for things of value. People are willing to trade real money, time, energy, assets for bitcoin – making it valuable. Additionally, since Bitcoin is finite AND real money and resources are consumed in created bitcoin the people that “mine” bitcoin are only willing to generally part with their coins if the market cost of bitcoin meets or exceeds their expenses in helping to run the entire system.
Absolutely, through various online platforms and Bitcoin ATMs.
Get a Bitcoin wallet, find a Bitcoin exchange, sign up, deposit money, trade for Bitcoin, and withdraw it to your wallet. We highly recommend checking out local bitcoin or crypto meetups and meeting others than can assist you with the process.
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