The Bitcoin Foundation has hired lobbyists to demystify Bitcoin

The Bitcoin Foundation has launched an initiative to educate the US government on cryptocurrencies. The advocacy group has retained the Thorsen French Agency to “introduce Bitcoin and the foundation to Capitol Hill offices, demystify our favorite protocol, explain its benefits, and show that there is a community of serious, thoughtful people and businesses working to deliver those benefits to the United States and the world.” Thorsen French Advocacy is a boutique federal advocacy and strategic consulting firm. The two partners, Alec French and Carl Thorsen, are a bipartisan team with a collective 30 years of federal policy experience. The pair list media congolomerate Comcast/NBC, drug manufactuer AstraZeneca, The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and ASCAP, among others.

Backers of the virtual currency bitcoin are beefing up their Washington presence as they seek to shape government oversight of the fledgling payment system. The effort has been building since a number of federal agencies began examining bitcoin last year, but reached a milestone on Wednesday when the Bitcoin Foundation, the top trade organization for the new technology, said it had retained a lobbying firm for the first time. The foundation hired Thorsen French Advocacy, a firm led by two former bipartisan congressional staffers, reflecting the group’s desire to win support on Capitol Hill at a time when it’s trying to influence an array of policy decisions. At least 13 U.S. government agencies have examined bitcoin, the Government Accountability Office said in a report last month. The lobbyists’ role will be to build “a reservoir of goodwill that we can deploy when we need to avert a crisis,” said Jim Harper, global policy counsel for the foundation, on a call with reporters Wednesday. “The best work will head off problems before they become interesting to all of you.” Introduced in 2009, bitcoin is an online payment system that allows users to transfer digital “coins” for goods or swap them for dollars or other currencies. The technology made several leaps in the way money can be moved online, sparking a wave of startups and Silicon Valley investments.