The City of Miami will give out Bitcoin rewards to its residents as dividends from staking the new MiamiCoin (MIA).
In an interview with CoinDesk TV, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said he’s exploring a new system where the city will distribute BTC dividends from the yields on staking its new crypto. Suarez wants to build a digital wallet that residents can use to trade and receive their dividends.
“We’re going to take our first draw on the first $20 million, and we’re going to stake the remaining balance in Bitcoin. So what we’re going to get as a yield on the staking is Bitcoin, and… We’re going to be the first city in America to give a Bitcoin yield as a dividend directly to its residents, so we’re going to create digital wallets to our residents and give them Bitcoin directly from the yield of MiamiCoin.”
Suarez revealed that the city had earned over $21 million from MiamiCoin already. If annualized, that amount would add up to roughly one-fifth of Miami’s entire yearly tax revenue, which theoretically suggests that in the long run, according to the mayor, the new system could eliminate the need for residents to pay taxes.
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“Why are we making such an emphasis on Bitcoin? We’re seeing inflation at over 6% which I think is an underreporting of inflation, and we see the price of Bitcoin surging, it clear that people are taking their money out of dollars, and putting in a currency and in a store of value that they feel confident in because it’s not driven by people who manipulate it for their own policy ends.”
Suarez has some friendly competition with New York mayor-elect Eric Adams, who has launched an “NYCCoin” and has promised to receive his first three paychecks in Bitcoin. Similar to Suarez, Adams wants to make New York an epicenter of crypto innovation. He promised to “build a pipeline of talent” of young people who understand the technology into New York and ramp up the ecosystem.
“Part of the meetings I’ve been having is to bring together the whole Bitcoin industry. We need to do several things with it. Number one, we need to look at what’s preventing the growth of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in our city, what is in the way of that. I’ve met with the mayor of Miami and we’re going to have a friendly competition…
He has a MiamiCoin that is doing very well — we’re going to look in the direction to carry that out.”
Both cities’ new cryptos are powered by non-profit CityCoins, which aims to make it easy to support one’s city through blockchain-based tokens. At the time of press, MiamiCoin (MIA) is trading at $0.024. Mining for NYCCoin started on November 10.
