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Bitcoin The Almighty Buck

Miami Launches 'MiamiCoin' Cryptocurrency (vice.com) 70

Posted by BeauHD from the coming-to-a-city-near-you dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: [Miami has] launched its own cryptocurrency, MiamiCoin, which claims to allow city citizens to earn Bitcoin "in their sleep." On Tuesday, Okcoin was the first crypto exchange to list MiamiCoin. The idea is to fill the city's coffers via speculation. People can mine the coin (which is less difficult and thus less energy intensive than mining Bitcoin or Ethereum), and revenue from the coin will be diverted to the city's treasury. As investors buy the coin, its value will ideally continue to go up, and that cash will be used to fund infrastructure projects or events in the city.

MiamiCoin, which is listed as $MIA on exchanges, is the product of CityCoins, a project that "gives communities the power to improve their cities, while providing crypto rewards to individual contributors and city governments alike." MiamiCoin is the first CityCoin to be released, though a cryptocurrency for San Francisco is on the way, too, according to the website. The project works hand-in-hand with the Miami government.

Bitcoin comes into all of this because the blockchain MiamiCoin runs on, Stacks, is built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. So, MiamiCoin miners are rewarded with small amounts of Bitcoin by inadvertently contributing to the Bitcoin blockchain. Mayor Francis Suarez, who previously invited persecuted Chinese Bitcoin miners to Miami after the country cracked down on the industry, said that the coin could earn the city "millions of dollars" in an interview last week. Suarez told Fox Business that the funds could be used to help "eliminate homelessness completely" and "increasing our police force." Despite emphatically not being Bitcoin and having complex layers of mechanics, Suarez said that MiamiCoin was "like a Bitcoin." Not all Bitcoiners agree with that sentiment. "Miami would be better off converting long term treasury holdings to Bitcoin. While MiamiCoin's novelty will likely generate some traction after its launch, I think it will fade away. All the while Bitcoin will continue to grow faster than the internet itself," said Brady Swenson, Head of Education at Swan Bitcoin, an app that automates Bitcoin purchases, and the host of podcasts Swan Signal Live and Citizen Bitcoin. "MiamiCoin will not benefit from Bitcoin's global network effect, nor accrue the corresponding exponential gains in purchasing power."
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Miami Launches 'MiamiCoin' Cryptocurrency More

Miami Launches 'MiamiCoin' Cryptocurrency

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  • MIA is at least good branding (Score:5, Funny)

    by omnichad ( 1198475 ) on Wednesday August 04, 2021 @05:05PM (#61656875) Homepage

    At least they have the right $MIA listing name. Which is where the investors money will be shortly.

    • One more Shitcoin! (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      A shitcoin is anything promoted as a form of money whose supply is easy to increase. In other words, anything other than gold or bitcoin.

      • you're confused, Bitcoin is the biggest shitcoin of all. A gambling token with no utility that causes pollution to sustain, buoyed only by hype and sucker's money.

    • I can see the headlines
      "Florida man launches own cryptocurrency. Declared $MIA"

  • Oh God no please no (Score:3)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday August 04, 2021 @05:12PM (#61656911)
    We do not need every city on the planet trying to fill its coffers with crypto coin speculation. We're wasting enough electricity on this nonsense. Especially in light of the problems we have with climate change. There are literally people starting up coal fire plants to mine crypto. I don't really like the phrase but this really does seem like the kind of late stage capitalism the hardcore lefties complain about.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      It's pretty much the same as funding education with a lottery, which Florida also does, without the irony.

    • Basically the same idea as municipal bonds.

      But instead of having to pay you back with interest, Miami sells you the coins and you and the other bag holders get to grow imaginary value until someone actually tries to cash out.

  • Time to start charging states for pollution. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Wednesday August 04, 2021 @05:17PM (#61656923)

    The problem with these types of schemes is that they eat up electricity which results in the use of more fossil fuels. As such, I think it's past time we start charging each state for amount of pollution they emit. This way, you crack down on stupidity like this and push every state toward desiring to pollute less. If they want to tax corps directly, fine, if they want to tax people on their behalf, that's also their choice. However, we clearly need to be taxing pollution.

  • Climate concerns aside, I'm interested to see how a crypto might help improve a city's infrastructure and alleviate poverty. Capitalism seems to have failed in these areas. This might even become another case study, hopefully successful, on UBI.

    • ⦠might help improve a city's infrastructure and alleviate poverty. Capitalism seems to have failed in these areas.

      Neither of those things is the responsibility of capitalism. Those things are the responsibility of the government.

    • I'm interested to see how a crypto might help improve a city's infrastructure and alleviate poverty.

      I have some bad news for you...

  • another political hack cashing in on hype they know nothing about. But hey, it's full of buzz words! Republicans like buzz words unsupported by fact

  • If you run a story every time some dufus launches yet another blockchain currency, I guess you can easily fill the frontpage, but ... news that matter? Rings a bell?

    • currency? Legally there is no such thing as a blockchain currencty.

    • If you run a story every time some dufus launches yet another blockchain currency, I guess you can easily fill the frontpage, but ... news that matter? Rings a bell?

      I agree that the stupid crypto stories suck, but should that line ring a bell? If I'm not mistaken, the tagline was "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters".

    • Not that i'm not fed up by cryptocurrency bullshit myself, but how exactly is Miami launching their own bitcoin brand not news?!

      • Not that i'm not fed up by cryptocurrency bullshit myself, but how exactly is Miami launching their own bitcoin brand not news?!

        Because it's become such common crap that happens every day now, which means it's all (yes, crypto currencies) meaningless.

        Everybody takes a crap everyday - you don't see that making the news, do you?

        • I'm sorry, but if you don't think the Mayor of a prominent US city announcing a Ponzi scheme fundraiser is news, you're in the wrong site.

  • Florida Man (Score:5, Funny)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Wednesday August 04, 2021 @05:33PM (#61656975)

    Florida Man starts own crypto coin. I can see where this is headed.

  • 1) There is is a finite about of processing power at any one time. 2) new crypto currencies and being setup all the time, removing the resources from other crypto currencies 3) Thus each new crypto currency negatively impacts all others that came before it 4) Eventually there will be more crypto currencies than there are stars in the sky, 5) The result of which is that all crypto currencies will be worthless
  • Whats going on here this is ridiculous.
  • They claim it uses less energy than Bitcoin - completely false. The only way to lower the energy use of a coin is to make it Proof of Stake (or similar technology). Having a Proof of Work coin with an algorithm that uses half as much energy as bitcoin's algorithm just means that it'll be run twice as often. The energy use of a Proof of Work coin is ALWAYS proportional to its market capitalisation because the bottleneck is electricity costs.

    • It doesn't sound like you know what you are talking about at all. Bitcoin's algorithm does not necessarily require a large amount of power. It is designed so that the money supply expansion is kept at a controlled rate irrespective of how much hash capacity is used to run bitcoin nodes. So no matter how much hash capacity or energy you throw at it, it will not expand the money supply any faster. Instead, it just makes the hash acceptance criteria more specific (raises the difficulty).

      The reason it uses so m

  • Big mistake - A government rep told fox news that the coin could help the homeless. Thats filthy socialism, right? According to fox, those homeless people are lazy, undeserving and, worst of all, some of them are brown (jeeves fetch my fainting couch). Expect the right wing outrage machine to spin up by this time tomorrow, and 24 hours after that De Santis will ban it.

  • OrangeCoin?
    BiglyCoin?
    YuugeCoin?
    StableGeniusCoin?
    ModMeNegativeOneCoin?

  • This scheme is a pyramid/ponzi scheme, has it escaped the attention of Miami that this is against state and federal law? Trust Florida to do something so stupid.

  • Constitional? (Score:3)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Wednesday August 04, 2021 @07:15PM (#61657239) Homepage
    Article 1 section ten basically says states can not 'coin Money; emit Bills of Credit' - doesn't this extend to any sub government within a state?

    Constitution Annotated [congress.gov]

  • PERSECUTED?! jfc. Bet the Uyghar wish they were only being "persecuted" by being told to shut down their planet-destroying ponzi shitcoin scheme...

    I realize the xyzcoin industry has to keep the hype engine running to maintain the sucker inflow, but that's a seriously weird turn of phrase to use to describe the CCP's shutdown of mining businesses.

    • Unfortunately it's not weird now, but steadily becoming standard practice. Anyone (it needn't even be a government) suggesting that you shouldn't shit all over your fellow human beings, constitutes a "persecution". Putting on PPE is the same thing as going to a concentration camp, according to one of our lovely new Congresswomen.

      It's taken us a few decades to build up to this point. I feel like social media's automated promotion of getmad "engaging content" from supposed "normal people" has sharpened it to

  • Because there isn't anything more important... (Score:3)

    by Glasswire ( 302197 ) on Wednesday August 04, 2021 @08:58PM (#61657531) Homepage

    ... going on like old, tall, dangerous condos on the verge of collapse that need inspecting and repairs enforced.

    • ... going on like old, tall, dangerous condos on the verge of collapse that need inspecting and repairs enforced.

      As someone who lives in South Florida (and actually know the area around that tragic collapse), I 100% agree with you. Our overlords have their public policy priorities backwards. Hustlers gotta hustle I guess.

  • Can I buy Columbian Marching Powder with it?

  • the coin could earn the city "millions of dollars"

    "Earn" - that word doesn't mean what he thinks it does. They are hoping to profit from people speculating on a new, untried cryptocoin. Which is to say: this is yet another tax on the stupid, just like government-run lotteries. There's no "earning" involved - instead, this is a hidden tax that will primarily be paid by people who can't really afford it.

    Meanwhile, Miami will have spent $millions setting this up. Money they could have spent "to fund infrastructure projects or events in the city".

  • I would prefer if Miami (and the Miami/Broward/WPB metro area) spend more time increasing public transportation than this shit. But what do we plebes know, hustlers gotta hustle.

  • All currency holdings, trad or crypto, are speculative. What the devil is Miami going to do when it suffers losses from its highly volatile cryptocurrency?

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