Does Miami Have Its Own Cryptocurrency?

CityCoins is a project created by CityCoins Inc. The first CityCoin is the MiamiCoin ($MIA) which was launched August 3,2021. CityCoins give people the opportunity to support their city and grow its crypto portfolio while earning Bitcoin or Stacks ($STX). Each city will have its own coin and a special wallet.  People can mine, hold and stack to earn STX with any CityCoin. Since this project is new the benefit of CityCoins will be earning STX, but overtime CityCoins will expand to additional cryptocurrencies. Every CityCoin that is created won’t have its own blockchain, but it will exist on the Stacks Blockchain as a fungible token. CityCoins also will not have an initial coin offering or be pre -mined. CityCoins will be mined in competition with anyone who wishes to follow the smart contract. The hope for CityCoins is that many more cities will start to create their own CityCoin. CityCoin communities will be able to develop apps that use tokens for rewards, trading, smart contract execution and local benefits. For example, businesses in Miami now can provide discounts to people that show that they ‘represent for their city’ by stacking their MiamiCoin.

At the launch of CityCoins the option to mine and stake STX became available. CityCoins are mined by sending STX to the CityCoins smart contract on the Stacks protocol. At any time, the winning miner can claim their rewarded CityCoins from their STX address. For every block that is mined 30% of the reward in STX is sent to a wallet that is reserved for each city and this is seen as the CityCoins ecosystem. The mayor of each city that holds a CityCoin will have to accept the reserved wallet to access the treasury to be used by the city. Through this system people can increase their investment portfolios by simply stacking STX and at the same time increase revenue for the city that they love.

CityCoin holders earn STX and BTC through a system on the Stacks protocol known as stacking. The remaining 70% of the rewarded STX is distributed to holders of CityCoins who choose to stake their coins. Staking demands holders to lock their CityCoins for a predetermined amount of time. At this time people can buy $MIA or stake STX for rewards at Okcoin. At the present time $MIA is trading at $0.03885 according to Coinmarketcap. I can only imagine that this price will increase, Miami is seen as one of the most cryptocurrency favorable cities in the world. Major Suarez has announced several plans to help the city attract cryptocurrency businesses worldwide.

Mayor Francis Suarez has taken it one step further: Miami will send the BTC yield (via STX earned to their city wallet from MiamiCoin) directly to citizens. This is just one way CityCoins can create wealth not just for governments, but for locals, too. Recently, Mayor Suarez has stated that Miami has made over $5 million via the Miamicoin. This money will go towards improving the city or its citizens will get disbursed the $5 million via Bitcoin. This idea reminds me of the Alaska Permanent Fund which pays out annual dividends to every eligible citizen of Alaska.

City coins have the ability to improve a cities overall standard of living. Developers can create applications that will allow locals to use their coins to vote on local issues. For example:

• How happy are we with our police force?
• How clean is our drinking water?
• How convenient is our public transit system?

To give a few examples maybe, for a small fee, citizens can add a comment that a city representative must acknowledge and then respond to. Upon acknowledgment and response, this fee could potentially be added to the city treasury or even allocated to fix the issue. This can act as both an incentive (increase city funding by responding to community concerns) and a force for accountability at City Hall.

Got a pothole on your street that never seems to get fixed? Citizens could use CityCoins to geotag it, allowing the entire community to become aware, and guarantee a response from the city.

Miami could also build affordable housing for its citizens instead of privatizing affordable housing. Most of the times affordable housing is implemented with funds from grants, private entities or the federal government. Usually these projects are never funded enough or self sustainable for the long term. Every city will soon have their own CityCoin. San Francisco is the next city on the map following in the footsteps of Miami, Austin and NYC.

References:

CityCoins, www.citycoins.co/.

Citycoins. “Citycoin/Citycoin-Prd.md at Main · Citycoins/Citycoin.” GitHub, 23 July 2021, github.com/citycoins/citycoin/blob/main/citycoin-prd.md#token-economics.

“Miamicoin Price Today, Mia to USD Live, Marketcap and Chart.” CoinMarketCap, coinmarketcap.com/currencies/miamicoin/.