Miami will soon become the first city in the United States to use its own cryptocurrency to reduce the amount of taxes its residents have to pay, Mayor Francis Suarez announced on Thursday.
The city’s own cryptocurrency, MiamiCoin, introduced early this year, has already earned over $21 million in the past three months for the city, which is pushing to get a leg up in the growing but volatile digital coin space.
“We’re going to be the first city in America to give a bitcoin yield as a dividend directly to its residents,” Suarez said during an interview with CoinDesk TV Thursday.
“You could theoretically at one point pay the entire tax revenue of the city and the city could be a city that runs without taxes, which I think would be revolutionary,” he added.
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Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are created by high-powered computers used to verify virtual coin transactions.
Virtual coins are operated on what is known as a blockchain, essentially a public ledger, that contains the history of every transaction.
Digital coin miners such as the City of Miami use computers to solve complicated math problems in order to add new blocks to the chain and are in turn rewarded with the digital token, making the endeavor profitable.
The city expects to eventually make digital coin payments to residents through a digital wallet and will work with a variety of cryptocurrency exchanges to allow its residents to acquire a wallet, register, and get verified, the mayor said.
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“We’re trying to create a comprehensive Bitcoin and crypto ecosystem so that we can grab the mantle of the most crypto-friendly city in the U.S.,” Suarez said.
