Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has revealed that he bought bitcoin and ether right after the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill passed the Senate, heading to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed. He said bitcoin “is definitely going to go up … because I don’t think people are going to want to stay in dollar-denominated currencies.” Mayor Suarez is also working to make Miami a “crypto city.”
Miami’s Mayor Personally Bought Bitcoin
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez revealed at the 2021 Ethereal Summit last week that he purchased bitcoin right after the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief stimulus package passed the Senate in March.
In an interview with Decrypt Editor-in-Chief Dan Roberts and FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, Mayor Suarez was asked whether he had already purchased bitcoin since he indicated in February that he would soon be ready to buy some cryptocurrencies. The mayor confirmed:
I did buy, thankfully. I bought bitcoin and ethereum. I didn’t buy DOGE, but I did buy bitcoin and ethereum, and I bought it literally the day — I’ll never forget the moment — it was the day that the $1.9 trillion spending bill passed the Senate and it was going to the president’s desk.
“I said I’m buying. That’s it. If the federal government’s going to spend $1.9 trillion then I think I need to have some, and this is definitely going to go up,” he shared.
“And frankly if they spend another $2.2 trillion on infrastructure bill, it’s going to continue to go up. I mean there’s just no way that it can’t because I don’t think people are going to want to stay in dollar-denominated currencies,” Mayor Suarez opined.
The Miami mayor also talked about how impressively big the crypto community is. “The number of customers, the number of holders of bitcoin and other crypto, you’re talking about tens of millions of people and I’m not so sure that the rest of the world really understands quite how voluminous, how exciting, and how energetic the crypto community is,” he described.
Mayor Suarez is also currently working to make Miami a “crypto city.” He detailed that besides hosting the bitcoin whitepaper on the city’s website, Bitcoin Conference 2021 will be held in Miami. In addition, he highlighted:
We passed a resolution that would allow for employees to get paid in bitcoin, would allow for our residents to pay for fees in bitcoin, and would allow us to potentially have it as a balance sheet item.
“I think we took a very progressive stance. We are very aggressive. I went to Wyoming, found their legislative package, tried to introduce it in the state legislation, [and] got very close to passing it on its first attempt, which is very unusual,” he detailed.
He added that it “passed the entire House and passed almost the entire Senate,” but noted, “I got bogged down in one last committee for an unrelated reason.”
The mayor described: “It’s an exciting time and I do think that this is the future of our world. And if we want to be a tech city in Miami, we have to take advantage of these opportunities to differentiate ourselves and get ahead of our competition.”
Do you agree with the Miami mayor on bitcoin and what do you think of his efforts to make Miami a crypto city? Let us know in the comments section below.
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