Miami Will Give Digital Wallets, ‘Bitcoin Yield’ From MiamiCoin To Residents: Mayor Suarez

MIAMI, FL — Miami Mayor Francis X. Suarez, who just easily won re-election Nov. 2, has long touted cryptocurrency, even pledging to become the first elected official in America to accept his salary in bitcoin.

Now, he plans to create digital wallets for all city residents and give them their own bitcoin.

While speaking with Coin Base TV Thursday, Suarez said that Miami earned more than $21 million on its new MiamiCoin since it launched in August.

“That is roughly 1/5 of the entire tax revenue of the city of Miami,” he said.

The city will draw $20 million from these earnings and “stake the remaining balance in bitcoin,” the mayor said. Then, Miami will give the dividends from its bitcoin investment to its residents.

“We’re gonna be the first city in America to give a bitcoin yield as a dividend directly to its residents,” Suarez said.

Related Story: Miami Launches Its Own Cryptocurrency To Fund City Services

This means the city needs to figure out how to create digital wallets for its residents and also determine who exactly will receive the “bitcoin yield”— taxpayers, voters or those with a city address — he said.

Other challenges include selecting a technology company to work with on digital wallets for residents and creating a secure verification and registration system.

Suarez said that members of the 5,000 Role Models of Excellence Program visited Miami recently to learn about the cryptocurrency movement. The mayor promised to give them each “a few hundred in bitcoin” and said this will serve as a pilot program for distributing bitcoin to wallets.

This is an opportunity to educate residents and employees about cryptocurrency and why the city is focusing on it so much, he added.

“When you see an inflation at over 6 percent — which I think is an underreporting of inflation — and you see the price of bitcoin surging, it’s clear that people are taking their money out of dollars and putting it in a currency and in a stored value they feel confident in because it’s not driven by people who can exploit it for their own policy ends,” Suarez said.