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Nov. 12 (UPI) -- Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said Thursday that the city aims to be the first in the United States to give its residents bitcoin as dividends from proceeds generated from its own cryptocurrency. MiamiCoin, the city's own cryptocurrency that runs on the Stacks protocol, was announced in early June. The idea is whenever so-called miners create MiamiCoin, they keep 70% of it while the remaining 30% goes to the city's digital wallet.
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Suarez told Coindesk.com in an interview Thursday that the city plans to give proceeds from MiamiCoin directly to residents in the form of bitcoin.
"We're going to be the first city in America to give out bitcoin yield as a dividend directly to its residents," he said.
The plan, he explained, is to create digital wallets for the city's residents into which the city will deposit yield from MiamiCoin.
According to the website miamining.com, the city's digital wallet in the last three months has generated $22.2 million in proceeds.
Suarez said that equals about $80 million if annualized, which could cover one-fifth of the city's tax revenue.
"You could theoretically at one point pay the entire tax revenue of the city and the city could be a city that runs without taxes, which I think would be revolutionary," he said.
The issue presented now is how this program will work. For instance, who will be entitled to the dividends?
"First you have to define the universe," he said. "And that in and of itself is going to be a challenge. Is it going to be, for example, taxpayers, is it going to be people that vote in the city, is it going to be people that have a city address? So that's going to be a challenge."
Technology companies will need to be approached about creating the wallets and a registration and verification system to prevent fraud and those moving to Miami simply to reap the dividends, he said.
The announcement comes on the heels of CityCoin, the company behind MiamiCoin, announcing on Wednesday that a smilier token called NYCCoin has launched in New York City.
The token aligns with Mayor-elect Eric Adams' vision for the city.
He has said he plans to receive his first three paychecks in bitcoin.
"NYC is going to be the center of the cryptocurrency industry and other fast-growing innovative industries!" he tweeted late last week. "Just wait!"
Adams' announcement came in response to Suarez days earlier saying he would be the first American politician to be paid in bitcoin with his next paycheck.
During the interview with Coindesk.com, Suarez said he and Adams are friends but have a cryptocurrency rivalry.
"We're sort of one upping each other," he said. "There's also this friendly rivalry among cities to being the first Web 3.0 city."
