Making money through digital currency
The city of Miami has made over $7 million since August through CityCoins, a nonprofit digital currency company, according to the Washington Post. The mayor of Miami, Frances Suarez, believes it may be possible for Miami to reduce or eliminate taxes through the mining of digital currencies.
The program has only been running since August, but Mr. Suarez is estimating that digital currency mining could generate as much as $60 million over the next year for the city.
“When you think about the possibility of being able to run a government without citizens having to pay taxes, that’s incredible,” Mayor Suarez says.
Miami city commissioners agreed to begin accepting the digital currency donations on September 13th. Miami is also looking into how to incorporate digital currency in other areas of city government by exploring how to pay city employees in bitcoin and allowing residents to pay some fees and taxes in digital currency.
How Miami’s digital currency program works?
CityCoins recently introduced “MiamiCoin,” which is based on the digital currency Stacks. As miners mint new Stacks and forward them to CityCoins, MiamiCoins are generated. Miners who create the most Stacks have the best chances of being awarded new MiamiCoins.
MiamiCoin miners create the new tokens by running software on their personal computers or other mining equipment. Miners earn a percentage of what they create; CityCoins automatically allocates 30 percent of the currency to the city, while miners keep the other 70 percent.
CityCoins describes itself as more of a collective than a business. It’s the brainchild of the platform’s community leader, Patrick Stanley. CityCoins is “trying to bring something into existence, that didn’t exist before, for the betterment of all citizens in the respective cities,” Stanley says.
Other cities may join CityCoins collective
Miami caught the eye of CityCoins because of Florida’s tax-friendly policies and Miami’s access to a south Florida power plant. Over the past year, Miami has been working to rebrand itself as a technology hub rather than just a travel destination. Since June, the digital exchange Blockchain.com announced it was moving its headquarters from New York City to Miami and the stock-trading platform eToro has said they will establish offices in the city.
The CityCoins website enables people to vote on which city the company should partner with next. Mr. Stanley says there is now competition among cities to create similar partnerships. San Francisco is being mentioned on the CityCoins website as the next possible city to get CityCoins tokens.
“The community is actively chatting,” Mr. Stanley says. “Do we launch in New York, do we launch in Austin, San Francisco, Singapore, or Seoul?”