Miami emAyor, Francis Suarez, is fighting to change his city as a haven for technology entrepreneurs and the tax dollars that follow. Its latest branding effort involves pressure to make the city offer its municipal workers the option to be paid in bitcoin, and he would very much like citizens to be able to pay their taxes using the volatile cryptocurrency as well.
On Thursday, Suarez announced on Twitter that the Miami governing commission passed a resolution allowing the city to study the feasibility of giving city employees the option to be paid initcoin. Meeting details were not uploaded to city website yet, but Bloomberg rEPORTS that the resolution was a little more ambitious than the mayor initially wanted.
The committee approved the measure by a 4-1 vote, but changed the language to request a study by the city manager to assess the impact of the resolution’s objectives. These objectives also include the potential to allow the city to invest part of its funding in bitcoin. This may require state approval.
Suarez was eager to assume tech industry workers fleeing the high cost of living in Silicon Valley at a time when most of their work is done remotely. Most recently, he made headlines after him spoken to Elon Musk about the Boring company that builds underground tunnels to help alleviate traffic problems in Miami. “If the governor and the mayor want this done, we will do it,” Musk said posted on Twitter. But critics say such an initiative could be a fool’s mission, because, among other things, the land beneath the city is a very soluble limestone, which is full of caves. Even if the logistical obstacles were overcome, it would be an extremely expensive project, said a geologist Limited.
Suarez’s techno-utopianism is not new, he was a regular speaker at the annual North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami and him he courted Royalties from Silicon Valley, such as Eric Schmidt and Chris Dixon, to help a technological migration to his city.
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Offering employees an option to be paid in space is not particularly absurd, but the notion of investing city funds in bitcoin could be a bridge too far. The price of the cryptocurrency reached an all-time high of almost $ 19,000 in 2017. By January 2019, it was around $ 3,200. As of this morning, the cryptocurrency amounts to $ 47,700. This type of volatility made bitcoin is impractical to be used as currentYes, but it is difficult to argue with long-term gains. However, it could be a more reliable bet than giving Elon permission to go dig up the foundation of a sinking city.