Miami is mAyor, Francis Suárez, is struggling to change his city’s brand as a haven for tech entrepreneurs and the tax dollars that come his way. Its latest branding effort is a boost to make the city offer its municipal workers the option to be charged in bitcoin, and he would love for citizens to be able to pay their taxes through the volatile cryptocurrency as well.
On Thursday, Suarez announced it Twitter that the Miami government commission passed a resolution that allowed the city to study the feasibility of providing city employees with the option to be paid in bitcoin. Meeting details have not been posted to city website yet, but Bloomberg reports that the resolution was a little less ambitious than the mayor originally wanted.
The commission approved the measure in a 4-1 vote, but modified the language to commission a study by the city manager to assess the impact of the resolution’s objectives. These goals also include the potential to allow the city to invest some of its funding in bitcoin. This could require statewide approval.
Suárez has been eager to take it on tech industry workers fleeing the high cost of living in Silicon Valley at a time when most of their work is done remotely. More recently, it hit the headlines after him spoke with Elon Musk on the Boring Company that builds underground tunnels to help alleviate Miami’s traffic problems. “If the governor and the mayor want this done, we will,” Musk said he tweeted. But critics say such an initiative could be a fool’s errand, because, among other things, the city floor is a highly soluble limestone and full of caves. Even if the logistical obstacles were overcome, it would be an extremely expensive project, said a geologist Braking.
Suárez’s techno-utopianism is not new, he has been a regular speaker at the annual American Bitcoin Conference in Miami and him has been courting Silicon Valley Royals like Eric Schmidt and Chris Dixon to help drive a technology migration to their city.
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Offering employees the option to charge in space money 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 close to $ 19,000 in 2017. In January 2019, it was around $ 3,200. Starting this morning, the cryptocurrency will come out at $ 47,700. This type of volatility has led to bitcoin is not practical for use as a currencyi, but it is difficult to argue with long-term gains. Still, it can be a more reliable bet than giving Elon permission to dig up the basics of one sunken city.