City of Miami launches its own cryptocurrency called… wait for it… MiamiCoin

Florida’s second-largest city, Miami, is all set to launch MiamiCoin this week – a cryptocurrency designed to help raise funding for local projects and events.

The crypto, which goes by the ticker MIA, has been developed in partnership with Miami’s administrators by a project called CityCoins, according to various reports.

The project aims to encourage people to invest in cities by purchasing its city-specific tokens and helping to fund local governments’ infrastructure plans.

So what do buyers of the tokens get out of it, other than helping Miami? They can be rewarded with Bitcoin (BTC) or another crypto, Stacks (STX), simply for holding or “mining” MIA.

“MiamiCoin is the first CityCoin to market,” reads CityCoins’ official website. “[It is] built to support the Magic City while rewarding its holders through the Stacks Protocol.

“MiamiCoin provides an ongoing crypto revenue stream for the city, while also generating STX and BTC yield for $MIA holders.”

The MIA token can be mined using STX and then “stacked” to earn further STX or BTC yield.

The CityCoins website states that, in order to mine, Stacks holders can forward their STX through the protocol – with 30% of tokens directed towards a wallet reserved for Miami’s treasury funding, and the remaining 70% available for the stacked yield options.

We’re talking crypto-yield levels here, which are typically off-the-charts impressive compared with sectors of traditional finance – see the image below.

An image grabbed from the citycoins.co website.

The wait is over!

MiamiCoin is HERE. Get ready to start mining MiamiCoin ($MIA) on August 3, 2021 at 1pm EDT.https://t.co/Rbwr9e8hXG

— CityCoins (@mineCityCoins) July 15, 2021

Stacks of progress

Most probably on the back of the MiamiCoin news, STX has been pumping today. It’s up 17.9% in the past 24 hours, rising from US$1.24 to a daily peak of $US1.56. It’s settled back down a bit at the time of writing, to US$1.46.

Stacks is decentralised platform Blockstack’s native cryptocurrency and its primary purpose is to help bring Bitcoin into the realm of smart contracts and dApps (decentralised apps).

According to the Stacks website, the protocol “makes Bitcoin programmable, enabling decentralized apps and smart contracts that inherit all of Bitcoin’s powers.”

It uses a consensus method called Proof of Transfer, providing an alternative to mining as a way to earn Bitcoin. “Lock your STX temporarily to support the network’s security and consensus,” reads the Stacks site. “As a reward, you’ll earn Bitcoin that miners transfer as part of Proof of Transfer.”

Bitcoin: first we take Miami… then we take the world

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez speaks at the Bitcoin 2021 Convention in June.

Miami sometimes goes by the nickname “The Magic City” and it’s certainly proving a magical place for crypto’s true believers. The city’s mayor, Francis Suarez, has emerged this year as a big proponent of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. And that might be underselling it.

Here are just some of the more recent crypto-related stories emerging from the Magic City…

• Miami was the host of the largest cryptocurrency conference yet – Bitcoin 2021, which attracted more than 12,000 cryptoheads and luminaries including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

• America’s National Basketball Association (NBA) gave approval in April for the Miami Heat to name its stadium FTX Arena, in a 19-year, US$135 million deal with the crypto exchange.

• In February, according to Bloomberg, Mayor Suarez proposed paying the city’s municipal workers partly, or completely, in Bitcoin, as well as collecting property and city taxes in BTC.

As for the mayor’s projections on MiamiCoin, here’s what he told Fox Business last week:

“The City of Miami could end up earning millions of dollars as a result of the popularity of MiamiCoin, because obviously Miami has now become… the Bitcoin capital of the world.”