By Gabriel Negrín
It’s no secret that the United States is gaining more and more strength in the crypto world. After the migration of Chinese miners, America has seen its crypto exposure increase.
In the aftermath, there has been a surge of adoption among mayors in a number of U.S. cities. One of the first was Eric Adams, mayor of New York who recently stated that he would take his first three checks in bitcoin as a part of making NY the BTC capital. The mayors of Jackson and Tampa Bay then followed suit.
Yet, the first mayor to jump on board was Francis Suarez, mayor of Miami. He stated that not only does he plan to take part of his salary in BTC, but also to turn the city into a crypto-paradise.
Truth be told, making Miami a crypto paradise takes a lot more than its mayor taking BTC as pay. It requires its citizens to receive and transact in bitcoin.
And that's precisely Suarez's plan.
Miami has already become the first city in the United States to have its own digital currency, MiamiCoin. Yet, the plans do not stop there. Miami continues with cryptocurrency plans that will reward its citizens with bitcoin.
Francis Suarez, the mayor of Miami, continued to expand details about MiamiCoin recently. Suarez said that the plan is for MiamiCoin investors to receive bitcoin rewards soon.
According to Suarez, this will play a critical role in the adoption of cryptocurrencies in the city. For the mayor, it is paramount for city residents to have bitcoin.
However, this is not enough — at least not to Suarez. He believes people must use BTC for the currency to have real utility. According to him, the more functional BTC is, the better it will be for its holders and users.
How Will Miami Citizens Receive BTC Dividends?
Yet, the biggest question is where these bitcoin rewards will come from. Well, the answer is easy: MiamiCoin comes into play and has a unique role.
MiamiCoin, the city's cryptocurrency, was launched through Citycoin a few months ago. This bitcoin-based currency has already raised some $21 million. And according to Suarez, revenue from the currency could represent one-fifth of the city's tax revenue in the short term.
This cryptocurrency has an open protocol that grants 30% of the reward to the city for each transaction. From this 30% that the city can collect, dividends will be distributed to the holders of a special wallet.
Likewise, the city would also get income through the virtual mining processes that MiamiCoin offers to its users.
MiamiCoin, Stacks (STX), and Stacking Sats
This virtual mining is what has allowed MiamiCoin to raise some 21 million dollars. The cryptocurrency is based on Stacks (STX). So when STXs are stacked, there is a 10% reward for securing the STX network. This would be another source of revenue for such dividends.
Now, how good will the rewards or dividends be? Well, in the short term, they won’t be so great. According to Suarez, he would pile some of the proceeds into MiamiCoin.
If we take into consideration the amount raised at the time of writing this article, we are talking about 21M. If he stacks half, we would have about 10.5M securing the STX network. If that 10.5M earns 10%, we would be talking about 1.05M in BTC.
While $1M is a considerable amount of money, when divided by the residents of the city, the reward is diluted quite a bit. With about 452K citizens, the reward would be close to $2.30 per person.
While that may sound small, Suarez has high hopes for this project and for BTC in general. On the one hand, he expects these rewards to be worth a lot more in the future thanks to MiamiCoin. On the other hand, he hopes that this will encourage many more people to start transacting with BTC.
Finally, he assures that these dividends could be distributed in an orderly and dilated manner in the future.
What will happen with Miami? Well, everything points to the fact that Miami will seek to go to war with NY to be the BTC capital city of the USA. Who will win? Well, only time will tell. In the meantime, we can only rejoice and celebrate this type of initiative.
