Miami to Send “Bitcoin Yield” Directly to its Residents’ Digital Wallet, says Mayor

The City of Miami is planning to soon be giving out Bitcoin wallets to its residents for their BTC yield from staking its cryptocurrency.

“We’re going to be the first city in America to give a bitcoin yield as a dividend directly to its residents,” said Miami Mayor Francis Suarez in an interview this week.

The yield will be generated from the staking of the city’s own cryptocurrency, MiamiCoin. Introduced earlier this year, the coin has already helped the city earn more than $22 million in just the past three months.

On annualizing this revenue, it would equate to roughly one-fifth of Miami’s total annual tax revenue of $400 million, noted Suarez.

“Miami just became an oil-producing country that pays its citizens…in Bitcoin,” tweeted CityCoins.

The payments will be made through a digital wallet. For this, he added that Miami would be working with cryptocurrency exchanges to allow its residents to get a wallet, register, and get verified.

This is a big deal. Not a handout either. No one was forced into giving up their assets (i.e. taxation).

Completely open, decentralized, and driven by the community with free market incentives. Thanks for your leadership @FrancisSuarez.@mineCityCoins made possible by @Stacks. https://t.co/5gxOenRMtZ

— Spartan.btc♟ (@Spartan06_btc) November 11, 2021

Suarez hopes that this could potentially remove the need for Miami residents to pay taxes in the long run, which he said would be “revolutionary.”

“I do see very quickly a world where the satoshi system is what is used to make payments,” Mayor Suarez said. “We need for people to understand that … yes, we want you to hold bitcoin, but we also want to increase the utility of bitcoin.”

“The advantage for every city to legalize citycoins is simple: they are a new source of funds for a city,” tweeted Balaji Srinivasan, former Coinbase CTO, and General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

“The remote economy means every city is now in competition with every other city. Citycoins express this reality. Residents can look at trends in citycoin prices as an important signal of whether cities are waxing and waning. And become hodlers in distant cities from afar,” added Srinivasan.

This week, CityCoins also announced that NYCCoin would be its second city coin after MiamiCoin. New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams indicated his interest in his city getting its own cryptocurrency.

“We’re glad to welcome you to the global home of Web3! We’re counting on tech and innovation to help drive our city forward,” said Adams on CityCoins’ tweet about activating NYCCoin mining.

These are programmable tokens mined by the residents that bring additional revenue to local governments. Users receive 70% of the coins they mint, while the rest is returned to the municipality in a city wallet in the form of STX tokens that can be converted to USD.