Nov. 10, 2021: It Mayor May Not Be Happening 🇺🇸🗽
Bipartisan Group of Mayors May Save Crypto in America
Happening status: it’s?
NYC mayor-elect Eric Adams (D) recently announced he’ll be taking his first three paychecks in Bitcoin, which might put him near the 0.5 BTC range. This sets up a coastal rivalry with Miami’s OG mayor Francis Suarez (R).
Suarez has already raised nearly $7MM for Miami with the CityCoins program, but Adams thinks he can beat this.
Scott Conger of Jackson, TN and Jane Castor of Tampa, FL are additional mayors who are leaning toward taking their mayoral salary in Bitcoin. Is America about to see Bitcoin flippen the municipal government?
While America is being broken from the top down, a bipartisan group is aiming to fix the system from the bottom-up. The innovative mayors mirrors the trend we see among Congressional hopefuls. PAC DAO’s crowdsourced database of crypto-friendly politicians vying for Congress is heavy on fresh-faced outsiders, including Aarika Rhodes, Rev. Wendy Hamilton, Matthew Diemer, and former Yearn developer Matt West, who hosted a great town hall yesterday.
This grassroots flippening is not just what America needs, but also exactly what cryptocurrency needs!
We’re not arguing from an economic point of view, mind you. It’s great that four mayors are looking to take their salary in Bitcoin, but even if every mayor in the United States took their salary in cryptocurrency, the effect on markets would be negligible. Here’s my back of the envelope math:
Curve Market Cap est. United States Mayoral Compensation, ~2018
I guesstimate the aggregate total we pay our mayors in America comes out to about $300MM-$400MM per year, pretty close to 5,000 BTC per year. There’s about 1.8MM BTC circulating on exchanges, so this would have a negligible effect on the markets. (at the end of the article I’ll go through the guts of this estimate).
Yet even if a few mayors accepting Bitcoin doesn’t make a major economic impact, there’s more important reasons why we should be excited as a community.