New York City Mayor-Elect Eric Adams announced he would receive his first three paychecks as the city's leader in Bitcoin when he comes into office in January in an attempt to boost the cryptocurrency industry in the region.
Adams posted on Twitter two days after winning the New York City mayoral race how he wanted to be paid for working as a public servant. The Brooklyn Democrat's decision to take crypto as payment was influenced by Miami Mayor Francis Suarez's tweet.
Paychecks in Bitcoin
In his social media post, Adams said New York City would later become the center of the cryptocurrency industry and other similar, fast-growing innovative industries. Both Adams and Suarez are trying to bet on highly volatile cryptocurrencies whose values are always changing and are more than what many business leaders are doing.
The CEO of Bitcoin mining company Riot Blockchain, Jason Les, revealed that he received a portion of his $240,000 salary in Bitcoin, which comes out to about 10 cryptocurrencies. This endeavor makes Les one of the few crypto executives that get paid in crypto instead of cash, CBS News reported.
Many consider Bitcoin 2021 as the largest Bitcoin event in the history of cryptocurrencies, with large groups of faithful fans flocking to Miami. The state has been chosen by many other crypto-related conferences due to how welcome the industry is in the area.
Adams is keen on attracting some of that industry boost and popularity, acknowledging in an interview that he was in a "friendly competition" with Suarez. The New York City mayor-elect said that his Miami counterpart had MiamiCoin that he wanted to take inspiration from and try to implement in his city.
During the interview, Adams also said that he was planning to determine what exactly was preventing Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general from growing within New York. This year, the city was discussing legislation to ban Bitcoin mining for three years to give it some time to gauge its greenhouse emissions, CNBC reported.
Cryptocurrency Industry
Additionally, cryptocurrencies are struggling to be accepted by the public and face hurdles for things such as day-to-day payments. This is in part due to the Internal Revenue Service taxing crypto as property.
Many are also questioning how a Bitcoin-based salary would work with federal labor laws and noted the uncertainty of who is in control of the "wallet" that would store the payments for Adams. A partner at the law firm Anderson Kill, Stephen Palley, said he found it difficult to imagine the process getting approved. He said that having Bitcoin-based salaries would be a "nightmare."
On the other hand, Miami Mayor Suarez praised Adams for joining in on his efforts of supporting the cryptocurrency industry in their states and trying to make it easier for the market to be used in the regions. "Touche, congrats on the election and I look forward to the friendly competition in making our respective cities a crypto capital," Suarez said on a post on Twitter, Politico reported. The Miami mayor's statements echo that of Adams and how the two are trying to spur each other up to bring the cryptocurrency market into the forefront of their territories.
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