A company, or a group of partners, is used to using Bitcoin to pay salaries, but have you heard that political groups also use Bitcoin to pay salaries? The new political group that the old Yapp introduced to you today announced that it will use Bitcoin to pay salaries. Mayors also want to use popular new technologies such as NFTs to raise funds for public projects.
Scott Conger, the mayor of Jackson, Tennessee, campaigned promising to improve the local infrastructure. He plans to build sidewalks, open an aging center, and repair aging rainwater treatment systems in a city of 68,000 people between Nashville and Memphis.
But when he began his fourth year in power, the 38-year-old Conger adopted a new and most popular cause: cryptocurrencies. He promised to give city employees the option to exchange their salaries for bitcoin and elaborated on plans to install a digital mining network on the empty side of City Hall. He said his goal is to make Jackson a tech hub in the Southeast.
Like many Americans, Conger discovered cryptocurrency technology during the pandemic, and he quickly fell into the portal to the unknown territory of the internet. His plan has made him a celebrity in the cryptocurrency world, a strange honor for the leader of a medium-sized industrial hub that produces potato chips.
"Bitcoin is a great financial equalizer," Conger said in an interview at City Hall this month. "It's a hedge against inflation. It can narrow the gap between the rich and the poor. ”
The surge in popularity of Bitcoin and other digital currencies has spawned a strange new political breed: the cryptocurrency mayor. New York's new mayor, Eric Adams, accepted his first salary paid in Bitcoin and another cryptocurrency, Ether. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez made headlines at the cryptocurrency conference. Now, even the mayors of smaller towns are trying to incorporate cryptocurrencies into municipal governments to attract startups and try to use popular new technologies such as non-homogeneous tokens (NFTs) to raise funds for public projects.
Their growing ranks reflect the growing acceptance of digital currencies by mainstream society, which are highly volatile and have depreciated in recent days. Mayors' embrace of cryptocurrencies also suggests that they recognize that the endorsement of the underlying blockchain technology of cryptocurrencies ( essentially a distributed ledger system ) could create new revenue streams for cities and reshape some of the basic functions of local governments.
Joseph Glendfest, a business professor at Stanford University, said: "Mayors rationally want to attract high-income citizens who pay taxes and incur very little cost to the city." Crypto geeks are perfectly qualified for this. "
But as with many ambitious cryptocurrency projects, it's unclear how much of an impact these local initiatives will ultimately have. So far, most scenarios have been either symbolic or theoretical. The mayors' goals are partly political: proponents of cryptocurrencies appeal to both parties and are popular among anti-government conservatives and socially liberal tech giants.
Finn Brunton, a professor of technical studies at the University of California, Davis, said, "You can do these things because you want to connect with guys who use AR-15, or you want to connect with Meta." He wrote a book on the history of cryptocurrencies in 2019. "A lot of it is hype and empty talk."
In Jackson, Conger became a regular on cryptocurrency podcasts, where he was hailed as the leader of the "Satoshi Nakamoto army." Satoshi Nakamoto refers to Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious founder of Bitcoin. Mr. Conger was a shoulder-width, fat college football player who sometimes went to work wearing socks printed with small orange bitcoins.
But his ambitions in the crypto space have run into obstacles. While he is about to set up a system where city employees invest part of their salaries in Bitcoin, his mining proposal proved impossible to implement under existing laws.
Conger wants to connect a set of computers to the Bitcoin network with public funds, an energy-intensive process that could generate new coins for the city. He even found a place to put the hardware: a suite room in City Hall that has been unfinished since the building opened in 1998. But a state law limits the types of assets a city can invest in, in part to protect residents from market volatility. Conger and other local officials are working on new legislation to add bitcoin to a list of allowed investments.
In many ways, Conger is following in the footsteps of Miami's Suarez. Suarez has become the cryptocurrency chief among the mayors. (Two people text occasionally; Suarez positioned Miami as a "cryptocurrency capital" and expressed support for the Miami coin, a crypto token that anyone can buy or mine, with some of the proceeds going into the city. He recently got into an argument with Mr. Adams of New York on Twitter about who of them prefers cryptocurrencies.
Suarez, 44, said in an interview, "Every time I talk about cryptocurrency technology, my analytical data advances by leaps and bounds. "The results of the analysis went crazy."
Suarez now casts himself as a crypto diplomat. After taking office as chairman of the U.S. Council of Mayors this month, he urged members to sign a "cryptocurrency agreement, calling on the federal government to avoid overly aggressive regulation of the industry.
Last month, Suarez had a Zoom private call with SEC Chairman Gary Jensler. Jensler called for greater censorship of cryptocurrencies.
"It's kind of funny," Suarez said. "Jansler said, 'I think I should have done a little more homework.'" It was in his own way to show that he really knew what he was talking about. (The SEC declined to comment.) )
Serving as vice chair at the mayors' meeting is fellow cryptocurrency enthusiast Hilary Schiff, who is being re-elected as mayor of Reno, Nevada. Last year, she announced plans to turn a popular whale sculpture in downtown Reno into an NFT, a unique digital product that can be traded by cryptocurrency investors. The aim, Schiff said, was to channel profits into Reno's art scene.
"It would be great if you could eliminate the middleman," Schiff said of his love of cryptocurrencies. "I don't like banks very much."
Building a decentralized city government based on blockchain technology has been a long-term goal for cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Vitalik Buterin, one of the founders of Ethereum, the blockchain behind Ethereum, wrote a blog post on the topic in October. Last year, a group of cryptocurrency investors bought 40 acres of land in Wyoming with the aim of creating a blockchain city operated by a decentralized network of investors, each of whom will vote on important decisions.
Currently, most officials interested in cryptocurrencies are focusing on relatively modest projects. Philadelphia CHIEF Information Officer Mark Wheeler became fascinated with cryptocurrencies in 2018 after hearing about Cook County, Illinois' efforts to list property records in decentralized databases. "Improve the quality of property data management within the municipality, like the beluga whale I've always wanted to catch," he said. ”
Wheeler stopped listening to NPR in the morning and listened to encrypted podcasts instead. In November, he invited cryptocurrency experts to come up with a proposal for Philadelphia; The original Bitcoin white paper has now been published on the city's website.
The craze has spread to small towns in the United States. Last year, 26-year-old cryptocurrency enthusiast Jalan Nelson emailed 2,000 U.S. mayors hoping to get them involved in the discussion of blockchain technology. He received a response from Chris Swanson, mayor of two ports of Minnesota. The town is located on the shores of Lake Superior and has a population of about 4,000 people.
Mr Swanson came up with the idea of forming a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), a collective of crypto investors that would pool funds to fund projects in both ports in exchange for some sort of voting rights on the new initiative.
Swanson, 44, said, "Building something is really complicated and you end up spending the same amount of money over and over again." "The projects that the community wants to see can be completed faster."
Nelson, who recently moved from California to San Antonio, has never been to two ports, where winter temperatures can drop below freezing. (In a recent Zoom call, he opted for a tropical backdrop with palm trees swaying in the breeze.) "I told Chris I would go see him during the warmer months," he said. At present, the project is still in the theoretical stage.
But with the mayor's support, Nelson is planning to create a trust fund to serve as the basis for the DAO. "I'm dreaming," he said. "Two ports can be turned into Disneyland."
Back in Jackson, Conger said he just wanted his children to settle comfortably in the city after college. He came from a respected local political family: his grandfather had served as mayor of Jackson, and his great-great-grandfather had run the city in 1861 and 1871, when the mayor served a one-year term.
Still, Conger acknowledged that some residents of Jackson are skeptical of his cryptocurrency ambitions.
This month, Bobby Mannes, a 54-year-old electrician, said at lunch at a local burger shop, "I don't know if I want to retire like this." "My concern is whether cryptocurrencies will still have value by the time I retire?"
Conger had no such concerns.
On a desk in his office, he had a book that looked like Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice. Although Conger remembers reading the book in high school, he wasn't an Austin fan, and the book wasn't actually a book either. It was a decorative box he found on Amazon that hid a safe in which he kept his bitcoin wallet.