Miami residents to receive city cryptocurrency proceeds, mayor says

(The Hill) — Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said he intends to give proceeds from the city’s cryptocurrency, MiamiCoin, directly to residents.

Those proceeds, totaling roughly $21 million, are a result of Miami staking its cryptocurrency in order to earn Bitcoin, according to the cryptocurrency news site Coindesk.com, which conducted an interview with Suarez on Thursday.

“We’re going to be the first city in America to give a Bitcoin yield as a dividend directly to its residents,” Suarez told the hosts of the site. “We’re going to create digital wallets for our residents, and we’re going to give them Bitcoin directly from the yield of MiamiCoin.”

MiamiCoin is the city’s version of CityCoins, digital tokens which people can hold and trade as a stake in their city’s government, according to The Associated Press.

Suarez also said the city will make the payments through a digital wallet program through which residents will be able to get, register and verify their own wallets so they can participate in cryptocurrency exchanges.

Saurez told the Coindesk.com hosts that the new initiative could eliminate the need for Miami residents to pay taxes, which he said would be “revolutionary.”

“I do see very quickly a world where the satoshi system is what is used to make payments,” 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.”

According to the Miami Herald, Suarez’s promotion of cryptocurrency over the last year has won him the attention of a national audience, even among local political scandal.