George Galloway has a wild plan to run London's budget using the tech behind bitcoin
Galloway, who is famous for his far-left views as well as pretending to be a cat on Celebrity Big Brother, is running for Mayor of London next year. The former MP, who lost his seat for the Respect Party in May's election, is running as an independent.
One of his key pledges is to run the capital's £17 billion ($26.4 billion) budget on a software known as MayorsChain, Finextra reports.
The software will keep track of public spending and let anyone see what's being spent where.
It will be built on the blockchain, the software that underpins bitcoin. The blockchain is a distributed ledger that records and enables bitcoin transactions to take place. It is completely transparent, prevents money being over-spent or double-spent, and is much quicker than traditional finance.
Blockchain technology also has the potential to be cheaper than traditional methods and Galloway reckons he can save 5% of the budget, or £9 million ($14 million), using this technology.
The MayorsChain website says: "Each London resident can then propose cost savings per item, again in a publicly visible manner. There will be a process for the Council to consider these suggestions and, if adopted, the changes will be recorded on the Mayor's Chain."
Galloway is also running a crowdfunding campaign for his Mayoral bid and on the funding page he is quoted as saying: "Now, for the first time, the radically disruptive technology of block chains can provide a technological backbone for true, 100 percent transparency. Political accountability, it seems, is about to take on a whole new meaning."
Galloway has developed MayorsChan with Max Keiser, an American entrepreneur-turned-broadcaster who hosts a financial TV programme on Russian state broadcaster RT. Keiser is an economic advisor to Galloway and a long-time supporter of cyrptocurrencies - last year he launched his own digital currency, MaxCoin.
As revolutionary as all this sounds, the chances of us getting MayorsChain aren't great. Galloway's odds of being elected next year range from 20 to 40/1, according to OddsChecker.