A tech-savvy mayor is essential for a CityCoins city.

The first two CityCoins mayors, Francis Suarez of Miami and Eric Adams of New York, are redefining civic engagement for the modern era. They’ve even sparked a friendly rivalry.

But true to CityCoins philosophy, there is no loser in this competition. Instead, residents of both cities win in this positive-sum relationship.

It’s a new age for workers

The pandemic has changed how we work. For information workers, it’s a remote-first world.

Now, citizens can act as customers, choosing municipalities like products. Expensive cities saw an exodus of knowledge workers at the start of the pandemic. That trend has only increased.

Cities need to work to attract this highly mobile group of workers. Crypto mayors understand this.

Crypto mayors are like startup CEOs

City governments are legacy institutions that deserve an upgrade. Crypto mayors get it done.

Mayor Suarez made Miami the world’s first city to adopt a CityCoin, vowed to take his paycheck in crypto, and is the world’s first mayor to give Bitcoin back to his residents with CityCoins.

Mayor Adams openly requested a CityCoin for New York, promised to take his first three paychecks in Bitcoin, and has seen his city’s wallet surpass $20 million in under a month.

Rather than the traditional view of municipal government, Adams and Saurez treat their cities as startups. They approach them less as enormous, lumbering bureaucracies, and more as nimble and exciting projects that prioritize experimentation and ideation in pursuit of progress. This is why these two mayors were the first to see the potential in CityCoins.

When it comes to something as relatively slow-moving as civic governance, the city-as-a-startup mindset is more than freeing: it’s an accelerant.

Why you want to live in a crypto city

There are a lot of things a mayor can do with crypto to upgrade their city.

1. Increase state capacity through funding

By activating a city’s CityCoin, mayors unlock more funding for their city. More funding means more things—improvements, programs, support, etc.—for that city.

2. Leverage open-source protocols to increase state capacity

By activating a city’s CityCoin, mayors connect their city to an open-source ecosystem. CityCoins incentivize open-source builders to create things that improve the health, wealth, or happiness of a city’s residents, including:

• Apps for tracking potholes, investigative journalism, or a net-promoter-style score for citizen feedback
• Tracking metrics for the health, wealth, and happiness of a city and its residents
• Providing a Bitcoin dividend to increase citizen wealth while giving them a practical education in how to use crypto

3. Positive-sum outcomes in politics

By using CityCoins, crypto mayors can create positive outcomes for all of a city’s supporters—not just their voters.

When Suarez gifted CityCoins and Bitcoin to students in Miami-Dade County, they received a practical education in how crypto works. Since then, community members have added NFT functionality to CityCoins. Projects like CityPacks build this new functionality to fundraise and empower additional educational resources for Miami-based students. State capacity increases; everyone wins.

CityCoins are a non-partisan tool that belongs to a city and its community. There are no gatekeepers, and winners do not require losers.

Follow the leader to see the future

It’s not enough just to sign policies from City Hall.

Along with the farsightedness and clarity to envision the possibilities crypto offers their cities, crypto mayors need to communicate that vision to their citizens in a clear and inspirational way. Adams and Suarez do. Their excitement and enthusiasm for this new technology is evident, and it radiates from the top of City Hall to street level. That type of energy and passion will be critical to overcome the obstacles that inevitably arise with new technologies, and bring cities into the crypto age.

As major cities champion the CityCoins protocol, more and more communities will join. With each one, the network grows stronger and more useful.

Mayors Suarez and Adams are redefining civic engagement for the modern era. Their cities are thriving tech hubs, and their actions are buoyed by an active, crypto-forward community.

Who do you think will rise as the next crypto mayor? Share your choice by tweeting at CityCoins.

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