During an interview with Forbes Magazine, the Mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, spoke about various ways of expanding the adoption of Bitcoin throughout the city and offering city employees the option of being paid in bitcoin.
Many important figures in the crypto world had positive feedback to this idea, including Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter and Square, who called the idea “smart.” Tyler Winklevoss, the co-founder of Germini, commented that Suarez is “leading the way for governments and Bitcoin.”
Suarez has mentioned that since crypto is so popular among the citizens of Miami, he plans to work on making Miami a BTC-friendly city. Some of his other proposals involve letting local fees and taxes be paid in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies and the now-famous idea of investing some of the city’s treasury into Bitcoin.
The Mayor doesn’t have an exact number for now, but he said that the treasury investment could be structured as a public-private partnership. Private partners would be compensated for diminishing some of the risks.
Suarez went on to mention that he is also taking into consideration the option of financing his reelection campaign in Bitcoin. In the past, Democrat Andrew Yang, Libertarian Lara Loomer, and California U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, also accepted crypto for their campaigns.
In order to make the Bitcoin changes he plans for Miami, Suarez revealed he reached out to Caitlin Long in Wyoming and Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis. This is part of his plans of making Miami the next big tech hub in the U.S.
If such actions are implemented, the 450,000 citizens of Miami may be stimulated to make BTC transactions on a regular basis. There is even potential that this idea could expand to cover the entire state of Florida, which has 21.5 million residents.
To make things even more promising, an announcement regarding the 2021 Bitcoin conference was made; the event will be moved from Los Angeles to Miami and will take place in June.