“It’s a major priority for the city to be able to pay government employees in Bitcoin,” said Miami Mayor Francis Suarez in an interview with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang. This has had a say in the stash of $21M that the City of Miami has been amassing since August. The amassing of these funds has been the result of a nonprofit called CityCoins, which has opened a digital wallet and a new digital currency called MiamiCoin for all Miami citizens to access. Citizens can mint new tokens using their personal computers and earn a percentage of the tokens they create. The city gets 30 percent, while the users get 70%. One MiamiCoin is worth approximately $0.02, but miners have generated more than $21M for the city since August. Now the city is looking to cash out, and each of the 442,000 citizens of Miami will receive approximately 0.0007 BTC, which is about $47.
The mayor said the creation of digital wallets for each citizen presents a technical challenge, for which he hopes to enlist the help of cryptocurrency exchanges. After that, a digital registration system will be created to lower the chance of fraud and of people moving to Miami just to receive Bitcoin. Then the payout will be made in bitcoin. The mayor wants to make the payment in bitcoin to conscientize people and get them used to the idea of bitcoin, even as government salaries stand to be paid in bitcoin.
