Last week, Bitcoin influencer Anthony Pompliano kicked off a new kind of mayoral race when he tweeted, “Who is going to be the first American politician to accept their salary in bitcoin?” Miami mayor Francis Suarez said he’d take his next paycheck fully in BTC. Two days later, New York mayor-elect Eric Adams replied that he’d take his first three paychecks in BTC. In quick succession, mayors from Jackson, TN and Tampa Bay, FL hopped on the bandwagon. But what cities are really in the running to become America’s crypto capital?
- Adams has floated a wide variety of pro-crypto policy measures, including public school crypto education, crypto paychecks, and a municipal cryptocurrency called NYCCoin (created in partnership the nonprofit CityCoins project, which has helped Miami raise over $21 million in municipal funds with its own token, MiamiCoin).
- Not to be outdone, Miami’s Francis Suarez, who’s been pitching his city as a crypto hub since 2020, has committed to taking his entire salary in BTC. Suarez has previously touted Miami’s cheap nuclear power to Bitcoin mining firms, proposed paying municipal employees in BTC, and even added the Bitcoin whitepaper to the city’s website.
- In a new blog post, Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin dug into the “crypto city” phenomenon — from blockchain experiments in governance in Reno, NV, to an attempt to create an entirely new crypto-powered city in a remote corner of Wyoming. Crypto-enhanced municipalities, he suggests, could use increased revenue to invest in life-enhancing measures: “They could add more bike lanes, they could use CO2 meters and far-UVC light to more effectively reduce COVID spread without inconveniencing people, and they could even fund life extension research.”
- According to LinkedIn data, New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles lead the U.S. in crypto jobs, followed by Miami and Chicago. But big, mostly coastal cities aren’t the only places to benefit — for every 100,000 LinkedIn members in Denver, Salt Lake City, and Raleigh, NC, two or more people were hired for crypto jobs.
Why it matters… The crypto industry is booming, with an unprecedented $15 billion in fundraising so far this year, and cities across the country are hungry for the sector’s workers. Adams, however, seems determined to ensure that New York’s preeminence in traditional finance extends to the cryptoeconomy. Or as the mayor-elect puts it, “NYC is going to be the center of the cryptocurrency industry and other fast-growing, innovative industries! Just wait!”
– Coinbase Bytes