The Bitcoin Conference in Miami is leading thousands of Crypto Elite and other investors who have descended in Miami for the largest crypto gathering ever.
Speaking to the CNBC, when asked about Miami having all the Bitcoin Elite or the Crypto Elite all in your city, you have almost tried to re-brand the city around crypto and on what does it look like right now to you in terms of both the energy that is coming off of it, what you actually want the city to be when it relates to crypto.?
Mayor Francis Suarez: First of all the energy is off the charts. As you said, it is the largest Bitcoin Conference ever. There are reports of about 50,000 people who will be attending the Bitcoin conference.
It has already changed the way our city works. We had FTX, which is the large crypto exchange out of Hong Kong buy the naming rights, to formerly what was the American Airlines arena a 200 million dollar deal. And, that 200 million dollar deal became a summer jobs program and became a slow strategy to come back, which is something that plagues every large urban city. So we are starting to see the fruits of that re-branding.
We want to be a city that focuses on the next series of technological advancement artificial intelligence of course crypto biotech so that is how we are positioning ourselves and it is bearing some significant fruit for us.
When Asked: You talked about the city itself taking Bitcoin and putting on the balance sheet and paying people in Bitcoin and paying people in crypto. Are you doing any of that?
Mayor Francis Suarez: Yes we are. We are authoring. The first thing we are looking at is to make sure that we surmount the legal hurdles. We have got the legal opinion that at least allows us to pay our employees in crypto and accept crypto for fees and payments
We also needed the county to get on board, there was a County Commissioner who also passed a corollary resolution of the county to allow tax payments to be paid in crypto. So, we are engaging in that process now.
We have to go to an RFP or basically a solicitation for a third party that can manage it. So we are continuing to go along in the process holding it on the balance sheet is a lot more complicated because number one
We are not allowed to hold something that is not fiat at this particular moment. So, that will require a state law change and of course the volatility of it is something that will have to probably work itself out.
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