MIAMI — Miami’s mayor says he plans to distribute the proceeds from the city’s cryptocurrency to citizens.
Mayor Francis Suarez said Thursday during an interview with cryptocurrency news site CoinDesk that he was planning to convert the millions of dollars cryptocurrency generated by the city into a Bitcoin “dividend.”
According to CoinDesk, the city’s own cryptocurrency, MiamiCoin, was introduced early this year and has already earned over $21 million in the past three months. If you were to annualize that revenue, it would equal roughly one-fifth of Miami’s total annual tax revenue of $400 million, Suarez said in the interview.
He says Miami will be the "first city in America to give a Bitcoin yield as a dividend directly to its residents."
So how would this work? And who would be getting the money?
Those details are still up in the air.
Among the questions that still need to be answered, according to Suarez, are whether the dividends will go to taxpayers, residents, people who vote in the city or those who have Miami addresses.
The mayor explained to CoinDesk that the payments will be made through a digital wallet that the city will help recipients acquire, register and verify.
Suarez said during the interview he hopes the approach could potentially eliminate the need for those living in Miami to pay taxes, which would be “revolutionary.”
