In Brief:
- Miami will pay its residents “bitcoin yield” soon, Mayor Suarez declared.
- The yield comes from the staking of the city’s own cryptocurrency, MiamiCoin.
The City of Miami will soon give out a “bitcoin yield” from the staking of its cryptocurrency to its citizens, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez announced on CoinDesk TV.
“We’re going to be the first city in America to give a bitcoin yield as a dividend directly to its residents,” Suarez said.
Suarez further explained that the yield comes from the staking of the city’s own cryptocurrency, MiamiCoin, which was introduced early this year and has already earned over $21 million in the past three months for Miami. Suarez noted that if you were to annualize that revenue, it would equal roughly one-fifth of Miami’s total annual tax revenue of $400 million.
MiamiCoin was launched in August through CityCoins which is an open-source protocol that shares out 30% of its reward to cites when their coins are bought or mined.
In the detailed conversation, Suarez said how the approach could potentially eliminate the need for Miami residents to pay taxes and termed it as ‘revolutionary’.
When asked about who the beneficiaries of the dividends would be, Suarez explained the first step to implement something like that would be to define the “universe” and the possible parameters for that include taxpayers, voters, or residents.
There are also technological obstacles that must be tackled in order to make this happen. On this Suarez said that he would have to tap multiple companies and crypto exchanges to set up wallets for the recipients, which would additionally require large-scale registrations and verifications.
“I do see very quickly a world where the satoshi system is what is used to make payments,” Mayor Suarez said. “We need for people to understand that … yes, we want you to hold bitcoin but we also want to increase the utility of bitcoin.”
Meanwhile, Suarez has always been a strong supporter of bitcoin and reinforced his stance after the latest US inflation data showed prices are surging at the fastest rate in 30 years. His support got quite evident when in June, he talked about holding two cryptocurrencies.
Moreover, recently, in a response to a tweet, Suarez had said that he is going to take his next salary “100%” in Bitcoin. He was joined in the agreement by Eric Adams, the NYC mayor-elect.
