North Dakota
Researchers complete study on agricultural economic contributions to North Dakota
NDSU researchers just lately accomplished an inaugural examine on the financial contributions of agriculture to the state of North Dakota. Outcomes present a contribution of practically $31 billion to the financial system and greater than 110,000 jobs.
The NDSU Division of Agribusiness and Utilized Economics and the NDSU Heart for Social Analysis partnered to seize the financial contributions of all segments of agriculture in a single, complete evaluation.
“This examination is the primary time that agriculture has been broadly outlined to incorporate all facets of the business,” mentioned Nancy Hodur, director for the NDSU Heart for Social Analysis. “Previous research seemed solely at a single section of agriculture, resembling a person commodity.”
“Agriculture in North Dakota is far more than farm manufacturing and consists of dealing with, transportation, processing and manufacturing,” mentioned Dean Bangsund, NDSU analysis scientist within the Division of Agribusiness and Utilized Economics. “When all of agriculture is mixed, its influence is critical.”
Key knowledge from the examine present that:
- Agriculture represents 20% to 25% of the state’s financial system.
- The entire financial contribution is $30.8 billion.
- 1 out of each 5 jobs within the state is supported by agriculture.
- Of the 110,480 agriculture-related jobs within the state, about 43,000 jobs are concerned instantly in agricultural manufacturing and processing, and about 67,400 jobs are required to help the agriculture business.
- Labor revenue for agriculture-related jobs is $7 billion.
“The info exhibits that agriculture’s influence is much broader than farms and rural communities,” Hodur mentioned. “This examine demonstrates the breadth of agriculture and its significance to not solely rural North Dakota however your complete state.”
“Agriculture is crucial to North Dakota’s financial system and is a driver of financial exercise in all 53 counties,” Greg Lardy, vp for Agricultural Affairs at NDSU, mentioned. “This examine offers the baseline knowledge wanted to assist transfer the business ahead. Because the state provides further value-added processing capability, the financial contribution of agriculture will proceed to develop.”
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North Dakota
North Dakota bill requiring inmates to serve 85% of prison time draws heated, lengthy debate
BISMARCK — A North Dakota bill that would ensure defendants serve at least 85% of their sentences drew hours of impassioned testimony and debate over whether it would deter crime and promote public safety or simply crowd prisons at a high cost.
Over the course of several hours, the North Dakota Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony Tuesday, Jan. 21, and Wednesday for and against
Senate Bill 2128.
Attorney General Drew Wrigley
proposed the legislation,
which would require offenders to serve 85% of their sentence before they qualify for release, also known as “truth in sentencing.”
It also would ensure sentences for resisting arrest, simple assault on a peace officer and fleeing are served on top of other crimes. The minimum sentence for resisting arrest would be 14 days in jail, while assault and fleeing would get at least 30 days.
The bill is Wrigley’s
second attempt in as many legislative sessions
to set minimum sentences. Language has been cut back from the bill in 2023, which went through a whirlwind of changes before its ultimate defeat.
The main difference is the 85% rule, which Wrigley said would create across-the-board reform.
“Senate Bill 2128 offers you the opportunity to right this wrong, which has evolved over years, and to bring truth to sentencing transparency,” he said.
Testimony got lengthy and heated, mostly on Wednesday when opponents of the bill spoke. Studies suggest minimum and truth in sentencing laws do little to reduce crime.
“It’s just a failed policy,” said Travis Finck, executive director for the North Dakota Commission on Legal Counsel for Indigents.
It’s unclear how much the bill will cost, as amendments are expected to reduce initial estimates.
The bill would eliminate parole eligibility for every North Dakota prisoner, said North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Director Colby Braun. Only those who do not get early release for good behavior and exceed 85% would qualify, he said.
“It ignores research and places the fiscal burden on taxpayers by focusing solely on prison capacity while eliminating reentry opportunities for most adults in custody,” Braun said.
Time not served behind bars
Crime has increased over the years, Wrigley said in arguing that his bill would hold those who confront law enforcement accountable. Fleeing, resisting and assault on officers often is served concurrently with other offenses, he said.
“It is a freebie, and it is a slap in the face to every man and woman who wears a uniform in this state that has watched misconduct toward them increase over the last decade or more,” Wrigley said. “All our legislation asks is for that to not be a freebie.”
The North Dakota Chiefs of Police Association and North Dakota Peace Officers Association supported the bill.
Bismarck Police Deputy Chief Jason Stugelmeyer said he has noticed a dramatic increase in officer assaults since 2020. He said the streets are more violent than when he started policing 24 years ago because people are not afraid to confront officers.
“Thank God, it’s not serious most of the time, but it’s crazy,” he said. “I sometimes hear we can’t arrest our way out of it, and maybe some of that is true, but we need a deterrent.”
Fleeing law enforcement also has increased significantly, Stugelmeyer said.
Finck noted Bismarck has a limited chase policy. Defendants know if they flee at a high rate of speed, police will terminate the chase in some instances, he said.
That suggests suspects flee because they think they will not get caught, not because they know they will not be punished.
The public thinks there is “truth in sentencing,” but defendants are serving a fraction of their punishments behind bars, Wrigley said.
“There is precious little predictability,” he said. “Forget about truth in sentencing.”
Truth in sentencing is needed to ensure punishments are being served, Assistant Burleigh County State’s Attorney Dennis Ingold said. Among several examples, he noted that a defendant he prosecuted got a two-year sentence for bringing drugs from Michigan to North Dakota.
The defendant only served 55 days behind bars, Ingold said. That included 20 days in jail the defendant served while awaiting sentencing, the prosecutor said. The defendant spent 35 days in prison before being moved to a halfway house, Ingold noted.
“If you look at true days served, that’s 7.5%,” Ingold said.
The DOCR would count the amount of time served as 50%, since he served six months in the halfway house plus early release time for good behavior, Ingold said.
“I know the argument is going to be that these are outliers, but these are real cases,” he said.
Data from the DOCR suggests the average time an inmate serves at one of its facilities is 50%, but that includes prison and transitional centers.
Early releases happen because North Dakota does not have a minimum standard for how much time must be spent behind bars, Ingold said.
“From a prosecutor’s perspective, we are using up a lot of resources prosecuting people who are still subject to DOCR sentences at the time that we encounter them,” he said.
Transitional facilities are used to integrate inmates back into society before fully being released from custody. People can leave for several hours, but they have to come back to custody, Finck said.
Inmates at the Bismarck Transition Center have to have a job, Administrator Kevin Arthaud said. About 100 people at the facility are inmates, while roughly 20 are on parole, he said.
“We are trying to make people ready for release,” he said.
There is structure at the facility with few walk-aways, or escapes, Arthaud said. SB 2128 would eliminate opportunities for inmates to use the center to prepare for society, he said. That means the facility likely would shut down, and local businesses who employ center inmates would lose those workers, he said.
Minimum mandatory sentencing laws do not reduce crime or recidivism, said Andrew Myer, a criminal justice professor at the University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute.
“For deterrence to work, we need three things to happen,” he said. “We need certainty, which means that the person will be arrested or caught for their crimes, we need celerity, that the punishment will happen quickly, and we need severity, that the punishment is at an appropriate level.”
He said minimum sentencing laws are costly and impact prison safety. Studies show that individuals serving time with minimum mandatory punishments have more disciplinary infractions in prisons, Myer said.
Minimum sentencing laws also can lead to overcrowding, which can put inmates and correctional workers in danger, he said. State prisons and local jails have been
pushed to their capacity limits,
and opponents of SB 2128 said the proposed legislation would create more inmates, as well as force them to stay longer.
Multiple groups, including out-of-state organizations, testified against the bill. That included the North Dakota Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Prison Fellowship from Lansdowne, Virginia, and the Due Process Institute of Washington, D.C. Several cited increased costs to both the prison and judicial systems.
“What about the cost to the public?” said Sen. Janne Myrdal, R-Edinburg, adding she is concerned about the safety of her constituents.
Transitional and treatment centers have helped give felons second chances and opportunities to reinvent themselves, F5 Project CEO and founder Adam Martin said. He himself benefited from such programs when he was convicted of crimes.
“Based on the philosophy of truth in sentencing, I should have never gotten it,” he said, adding he would have served lengthy prison sentences.
Instead, he has never been to prison. He started an organization that helps people who struggle with incarceration, and Martin ultimately
was pardoned of his crimes in North Dakota.
The F5 Project has helped more than 40,000 people, he said.
Had he gone to prison, he believes he would not have gotten those opportunities, Martin said. Blanketing sentences will not benefit anyone, he said.
“I do believe what the speaker earlier said about mercy and grace. It works,” Martin said.
North Dakota
North Dakota sued Interior at least five times under Doug Burgum. Now he’s set to run the agency. • North Dakota Monitor
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the North Dakota Monitor. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.
During Doug Burgum’s two terms as North Dakota governor, the state repeatedly sued the U.S. Department of the Interior, attempting to rip up rules that govern federal lands in his state and across the country.
Now, Burgum is poised to oversee that same department as President Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of the interior. Those lawsuits and a host of others the state launched against the federal government, some of which are ongoing, reveal the worldview he’ll bring to a department that touches nearly every aspect of life in the West. Its agencies oversee water policy, operate the national parks, lease resources to industries including oil and ranching, provide services across Indian Country and manage more land than any person or corporation in the nation.
During his confirmation hearing last week before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Burgum portrayed the Interior Department as key to geopolitical power struggles. On energy policy, he said that growing consistently available types of energy production — namely nuclear and climate-warming coal, oil and gas — is a matter of national security; he claimed that greenhouse gas emissions can be mitigated with carbon capture technology that’s unproven at scale; and he argued that renewable energy is too highly subsidized and threatens the electrical grid.
The committee advanced his nomination to the full Senate on Thursday.
The North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica reviewed the nearly 40 lawsuits in which the state was a named plaintiff against the federal government at the time Burgum left the governor’s office. In addition, the review included friend of the court briefs the state filed to the Supreme Court and Burgum’s financial disclosures and public testimony. Many of the nearly 40 suits were cases North Dakota filed or signed onto with other Republican-led states, although the state brought a handful independently. Five of the cases were lodged against the Interior Department.
Burgum is a relative newcomer to politics who initially made his fortune when he sold his software company. But the cases and disclosures highlight his deep ties to the oil and gas industry, which have aided his political rise. The records also put on display his sympathy for Western states that chafe at what they believe is overreach by the Interior Department and that attack federal land management.
Notably, the litigation includes a case aimed at undoing the Interior Department’s hallmark Public Lands Rule that designated the conservation of public lands as a use equal in importance to natural resource exploitation and made smaller changes such as clarifying how the government measures landscape health. Additionally, North Dakota filed a case to roll back the agency’s rule intended to limit the amount of methane that oil companies could release, a practice that wastes a valuable resource and contributes to climate change. North Dakota also cosigned a brief in support of a controversial, although ultimately futile, attempt by Utah to dismantle the broader federal public lands system.
While some of the cases mirror his party’s long-running push to support the oil and gas industry over other considerations, including conservation, the litigation over public lands represents a more extreme view: that federal regulation of much of the country’s land and water needs to be severely curtailed.
Burgum did not respond to requests for comment but made clear many of his positions in public statements. A spokesperson did not answer a question on whether Burgum would recuse himself from matters pertaining to the cases his state filed.
While the state’s attorney general handled the lawsuits, Burgum emphatically supported them, urging state lawmakers last spring to fully fund the legal fights. He also cited the litigation during his confirmation hearing to assure Republican lawmakers that he would increase oil and gas leasing on public lands.
While speaking to North Dakota lawmakers about federal actions, Burgum characterized the Biden administration’s environmental policies as “misguided rules and regulations proposed often by overzealous bureaucrats.” The rules, he said, pose “an existential threat to the energy and ag sectors, our economy and our way of life.”
Burgum is considered less controversial than some other Trump nominees and is expected to gain Senate approval in the days ahead. Outdoor recreation groups and multiple tribes publicly supported his nomination, and he was lauded at his confirmation hearing by Republican as well as some Democratic senators. “If anybody is the pick of the litter, it’s got to be this man,” said Sen. Jim Justice, a Republican of West Virginia, another key fossil fuel-producing state.
Conservation groups, meanwhile, decried Burgum as an anti-public lands zealot who does oil companies’ bidding. Among them is Michael Carroll, who runs the Wilderness Society’s Bureau of Land Management campaign.
“If you’re not a reality TV star or under investigation for ethics violations or misconduct, you’re considered a normal nominee,” Carroll said of Trump’s picks. But, he continued, that obscures how Burgum and a Republican sweep of the federal government present a threat to public lands that’s “as extreme as we’ve seen. Period. Full stop.”
‘Giveaways of federal public lands’
The federal government manages significant portions of the West. Most of that comes through the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, which oversees an area more than five times the size of North Dakota. As a result, public lands management is a local flashpoint.
North Dakota has had a particularly contentious relationship with the federal government over its management of public lands that intermingle with parcels owned by the state or private citizens.
Lynn Helms was the state’s top oil regulator for more than 25 years before retiring last year, and he witnessed constant conflict over how federal agencies wanted to manage land in the state. “From the time I took this office until the day I walked away, there has always been at least one federal resource management plan or leasing plan under development and in controversy,” he told the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica.
Two titanic legal fights will shape the future of federal land management. North Dakota is not a named plaintiff in the cases, but the state and Burgum have made known their opposition to federal authority in both.
Last August, Utah sued the United States, asking the Supreme Court to rule that the federal government’s oversight of 18.5 million acres of public land in the state was unconstitutional. Utah, in its founding documents, forswore any unappropriated public lands to the federal government. Still, legal scholars and environmentalists worried a conservative Supreme Court might remove land management responsibilities from the federal government, which is widely seen as more favorable to conservation than Republican-led states are.
“Few issues are as fundamentally important to a State as control of its land,” a coalition that included North Dakota wrote in support of Utah’s case in a friend of the court brief during Burgum’s tenure.
Carroll, of the Wilderness Society, said that North Dakota siding with Utah was cause for concern about Burgum leading the Interior Department. “Supporting that lawsuit suggests that he’d be willing to support large-scale sell-off or giveaways of federal public lands, which, for most of us who live in the West and are concerned about the future of those public lands, is a very extreme position,” he said.
The Supreme Court in mid-January declined to take up the case, but Utah pledged to keep fighting. Burgum expressed sympathy for the state during his confirmation hearing, telling Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican and champion of the anti-federal movement, that Western states feel like “floating islands in a sea of federal land.”
Meanwhile, Republicans and industry groups also have their sights set on the 118-year-old Antiquities Act, which gives the president authority to create national monuments to protect areas of cultural, historical or scientific significance. Using the act, former President Joe Biden set aside more land and water for conservation than any previous president.
Burgum’s stance on the act is key, as the Interior Department typically handles details of these monuments, including where their borders are drawn.
During his confirmation hearing, Burgum said the Antiquities Act should be used for limited “Indiana Jones-type archeological protections,” not the sweeping landscapes that recent Democratic presidents have protected. While various tribes supported the use of the Antiquities Act in recent years, Burgum suggested monument designations have hurt tribes.
In western North Dakota, tribal representatives, conservation groups and others have pushed for a monument — which they’ve suggested calling Maah Daah Hey National Monument — to preserve 140,000 acres considered sacred by members of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation and other nearby Indigenous cultures. Burgum has expressed concern that such a designation would impede oil and gas drilling. And while he boasted at his confirmation hearing about conservation wins in his home state — such as creating the North Dakota Office of Outdoor Recreation — he didn’t mention the monument proposal.
In addition to legal challenges against the Interior Department, North Dakota is part of 14 lawsuits against the Environmental Protect Agency and at least five cases, which challenge environmental or climate-related regulations, against other federal agencies.
One of those cases, led by Iowa and North Dakota, seeks to roll back updates to Biden-era rules concerning the implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act, one of the nation’s core environmental laws. The legal battle will have sweeping implications for the government’s environmental permitting process, influencing major construction projects across the country, including those aimed at building infrastructure to meet the ongoing surge in electricity demand.
‘Blatant conflicts with the oil industry’
In North Dakota’s litigation and Burgum’s record, one idea stands out for how often it is repeated: the opinion that the federal government impedes oil and gas drilling. The state, one of the country’s top oil and gas producers, has consistently pushed for more drilling on public lands. Burgum has been cheerleading the industry for years.
Shortly before completing his term in mid-December, Burgum appealed a Bureau of Land Management land-use plan for the state, saying it hindered oil and gas development by barring oil, gas and coal leasing on several hundred thousand acres of federal mineral rights. (The agency denied Burgum’s appeal and finalized the plan.)
Under Burgum, North Dakota also sued the Bureau of Land Management over the agency’s handling of mineral lease sales, a system that allows companies to drill for and profit off publicly owned natural resources and that Helms labeled as “badly broken.” In the lawsuit, which is ongoing, the state argued the bureau neglected its duty to host quarterly lease sales under the Mineral Leasing Act. (A federal judge has ordered the bureau to address this issue.)
Environmental groups worry that Burgum’s ties to the oil industry influence his oversight of fossil fuels. Trump also picked Burgum to run the nascent National Energy Council, which will focus on boosting energy production.
His relationship with oil magnate Harold Hamm, the richest man in Oklahoma and a pioneer in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technology, has been well-documented.
Hamm pledged $50 million to the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, a favored project for Burgum. When Burgum ran for president before dropping out and supporting Trump, he received nearly $500,000 in campaign contributions from oil and gas interests, about half of which came via a PAC sponsored by Continental Resources, which Hamm founded. Burgum also has acknowledged that he attended an April 2024 meeting at Mar-a-Lago that Hamm helped organize for oil executives to meet with Trump and pledge financial support for his campaign.
Burgum’s financial disclosure reports reveal a personal fortune spread across software companies, real estate ventures and farmland. He also listed royalties from oil and gas leases involving Hess Corporation, Kodiak Oil & Gas Corp. and Continental Resources.
In his required ethics agreement to become secretary of the interior, Burgum committed to resign from several companies, divest from energy-related holdings and work with agency ethics officials to avoid conflicts, including those tied to his home state. He also testified at his confirmation hearing that he had no outstanding conflicts of interest.
“Doug Burgum’s blatant conflicts with the oil industry cast doubt on his ability to fairly manage our public lands,” said Tony Carrk, executive director of government ethics watchdog Accountable.US.
‘He wants to cut tape so that the benefits actually get to the tribes’
Among its many mandates, the Interior Department is tasked with fulfilling the United States’ trust responsibility to 574 federally recognized sovereign tribes. This includes providing schools and health care, representing tribes as they negotiate water rights settlements and liaising between tribes and the federal bureaucracy.
Burgum has had good relationships with tribal leaders in North Dakota. He partnered with tribes to pass tax-sharing agreements, was the first North Dakota governor to permanently display tribal nations’ flags outside his office and created an annual conference to bring together leaders of tribal and state governments.
Burgum also found common ground with a local tribe seeking to expand oil and gas drilling. “He wants to cut tape so that the benefits actually get to the tribes,” said Chairman Mark Fox of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, who hopes to see more wells drilled on the Fort Berthold Reservation.
Fox said that he stays in touch with the former governor and that Burgum has asked him for input on issues affecting Indian Country, although he declined to share specifics.
“The No. 1 priority in discussion is: How do we enhance our opportunity to develop our trust resources of oil and gas?” Fox said.
But the state, under Burgum’s leadership, has also taken opposing positions on major issues to tribes, both inside and outside its boundaries.
When Burgum assumed the governorship in December 2016, a monthslong protest was raging against construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which transports oil from North Dakota to Illinois. Thousands of protesters joined with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, who assert that the pipeline infringes on its tribal sovereignty, disrupts sacred cultural sites and poses an environmental hazard.
Burgum supports the project.
North Dakota sued the federal government over claims that the Army Corps of Engineers should have done more to quell the demonstrations, leaving state and local law enforcement and first responders to step in at a cost of $38 million. During the case, which went to trial in early 2024 and is yet unresolved, Burgum also criticized other agencies, including the Interior Department, alleging they sided with protesters.
“It’s dangerous in our country where politics on either side — either party, either direction, whatever — can somehow inject themselves in a permitting process,” Burgum said, according to court records.
The difference between Burgum’s views and that of many tribes around the country is especially stark on conservation.
The state became a co-defendant in December in a separate lawsuit the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe brought against the Army Corps of Engineers calling for the pipeline to be shuttered. Parties to the litigation have filed briefs, and the case is ongoing.
And the state and some tribes are at odds over the Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule, which clarified the role of a land designation called “areas of critical environmental concern.” A central purpose of the designation is to protect “rare or sensitive archeological resources and religious or cultural resources important to Native Americans.” Various tribes support the rule, but North Dakota is suing to halt it.
Despite those disagreements, tribal leaders in North Dakota said they respect Burgum, and several credited him with rebuilding relations. Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairwoman Janet Alkire said Burgum has a strong grasp of issues facing Indian Country, while Fox said Burgum has been willing to work with tribal leaders.
As Burgum takes the reins at the Interior Department, Monte Mills, director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Washington School of Law, said he is watching how Burgum will work with tribes that favor conservation over natural resource extraction.
It remains to be seen if keeping the federal government’s commitments to Indian Country are a priority for Burgum, Mills said, or whether tribal issues are “only really taken up where they align with other priorities of the administration.”
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North Dakota
North Dakota bill aiming to regulate crypto kiosks, prevent fraud gets mixed reactions
BISMARCK — A bill in the North Dakota House of Representatives aims to regulate cryptocurrency kiosks by limiting deposits, capping fees and requiring fraud detection measures in response to rising concerns over financial scams.
House Bill 1447
would regulate virtual currency kiosks, also known as cryptocurrency kiosks or crypto ATMs. The proposal would license cryptocurrency kiosk operators in North Dakota, limit daily deposits to $1,000, cap fees at 3%, require blockchain analytics to detect suspicious activity and mandate refunds for new customers within 30 days.
Simply put, crypto kiosks allow people to insert cash, turn it into cryptocurrency and deposit it into an electronic wallet. It also allows anyone with an electronic wallet to turn cryptocurrency into cash and withdraw it.
More than $6 million was stolen through cryptocurrency fraud in North Dakota in 2023, and the FBI received over 5,500 complaints involving crypto kiosks nationally in 2023, according to AARP.
Rep. Steve Swiontek, R-Fargo, said scammers are directing people to withdraw money from their bank accounts and put it into the crypto ATMs, where it is deposited directly into the electronic wallets of the scammers.
Swiontek chairs the board of Gate City Bank and has worked in banking for over 40 years.
He told a story about a person in North Dakota who received a message from a fraudster posing as a federal employee saying they would purchase child sexual abuse material using the person’s identity, open offshore accounts in the person’s name and that their family would be in danger if they did not comply with the fraudster’s directives. The person took out nearly $25,000 and gave it to the fraudster using a crypto kiosk. The person almost gave the fraudster another $25,000, but after a conversation with a neighbor who worked in law enforcement, they found out they had been scammed.
A fraud investigator for First Western Bank, Jacob Rued, said another way fraudsters often work is to refer to the crypto ATMs as “federal safety lockers” and tell people they are scamming that their money is not safe in their bank and needs to be deposited in the “federal safety locker.”
“If you ever hear that term, or someone you love says that term to you, you and they are being scammed,” Rued said. “That term does not exist.”
Josh Askvig, state director of AARP North Dakota, said that elderly North Dakotans are especially vulnerable to these crypto scams.
Rep. Ben Koppelman, R-West Fargo, questioned the necessity of caps on daily transactions and fees because he believes it would unnecessarily burden a growing industry. He said there are legitimate reasons for people to use the kiosks because if there weren’t, there wouldn’t be successful, publicly traded companies based on them.
“I just don’t believe that there would be a publicly traded company that’s investing in something that’s 99% scams,” Koppelman said. “And that somehow that’s got across (past) all the regulators that deal with the publicly traded companies.”
Koppelman suggested the implementation of a cap on a user’s first five transactions to protect first-time users from scams without impacting those who regularly use the kiosks.
Rued said without the caps on daily transactions, the bill would be useless.
He shared a story about a person who experienced fraud in Minnesota when he took $50,000 out of his bank account, intending to put it all into the kiosk and give it to the scammer’s electronic wallet, but was stopped at depositing $2,000 into the kiosk by Minnesota’s regulations. After he was stopped, he realized he was being scammed and did not give the remaining $48,000 to the fraudster.
“Without that (cap), he would have lost all $50,000,” Rued said. “Now, could he report that to us the next day? Sure. But in all reality, the money is gone. If you know anything about the blockchain and crypto — I mean the whole essence and principle of it is, once it’s out there, the government can’t go get it. No one can exercise control over it.”
Rue noted he was in favor of the cap on fees, as well. The companies that operate the kiosks are “profiting off the losses of these victims,” he said.
Representatives of two companies that operate cryptocurrency kiosks said they were in support of licensing operators of kiosks but not caps on fees and daily transactions.
Director of Government Relations at Bitcoin Depot Ethan McClelland said the cap on transaction fees and daily transaction amounts would make operating in North Dakota unsustainable and drive responsible operators of crypto kiosks out of the state.
The transaction limits “are encouraging scammers to spread transactions around, and it’s hindering our efforts and law enforcement’s efforts to combat fraud,” McClelland said.
Rued disagreed.
“To be perfectly frank with you,” Rued said, “with no disrespect to them, it’s laughable to me that the transaction limit is going to increase the fraud or it’s going to make it more difficult to investigate. My opinion would be the exact opposite — it’s going to decrease fraud.”
Koppelman said the bill will be worked on in a committee before a recommendation is voted on.
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