Could Eric Adams really be paid in Bitcoin?

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Photo-Illustration: Intelligence. Photos: Getty Images

There is a sort of arms race between Eric Adams and his future Miami counterpart, Mayor Francis Suarez – Adams calls it a “friendly competition” – in which the big city will be the dominant hub of the emerging industry in the world. cryptocurrency. Suarez, a Republican who embraced cryptos during the pandemic, took the lead by aloud marketing the Magic City as a friendlier alternative to Silicon Valley, for example, encouraging a crypto exchange to gain the rights to denomination for the Miami Heat Arena. Its MiamiCoin grossed $ 20 million for city coffers just months after its first announcement. The project has been so successful that the city plans to return that money to Miamiians through a dividend.

So when Suarez announced on Twitter that he would take a salary entirely in bitcoin, Adams saw the possibility of a bidding up. “In New York, we’re always going big, so I’m going to take my first THREE Bitcoin paychecks when I’m mayor,” he posted on November 4. “NYC is going to be the center of the cryptocurrency industry and other fast-growing and innovative industries! Of course, there were jokes about it all, although Adams’ cheerleaders for crypto and tech jobs could have a huge impact on the city’s economic recovery coming out of the pandemic. . But a bigger question arises: Can Adams actually be paid in bitcoin?

It turns out it’s complicated. It’s unclear whether the city itself could pay Adams other than in dollars at this time. The New York City charter clearly states that the mayor will receive a salary of “two hundred and fifty-eight thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars a year,” and there does not appear to be any waiver for other faiths. And despite their name, cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are actually seen as some sort of commodity thanks to a Depression-era law, which means that in a certain perspective it wouldn’t be much different from the Mayor Bill de Blasio asking to be paid in barrels. of oil. Such a process is like “asking a city institution to do banking primarily for you,” a skeptical former federal prosecutor told me, now in private practice. “They have to take the dollars that came out of the budget for his salary and now convert them into virtual currency.” On how the city could convert dollars into digital currency, the finance ministry did not return an email asking for clarification, the comptroller’s office said I should speak to the administration office of the payroll – a service he helps oversee – and this department said I should contact the current mayor’s office, which did not respond.

But that could change – and not just for Adams, but for all city workers. Not only did Suarez offer to pay Miami public employees part of their salary in crypto, the mayor of Jackson, Tennessee too. And the industry has been more than happy to accommodate these plans. BitWage, a San Francisco-based company that has been in existence since 2014, has around 2,000 companies and 50,000 registered users – including Toronto football star Ifunanyachi Achara – who use its platform to automatically convert some or all paychecks. in crypto, CEO Jonathan Chester says Intelligencer. Working directly with municipalities can be a complicated process due to government procurement and transparency rules, which sometimes state that in order to win a tender, a business must have been in business for a number of years. or have worked with the government before, Chester said. “This kind of traditional way of tendering doesn’t quite work in this industry because of how new it is,” he added. If Adams wants, however, every city home inspector, subway operator and librarian could soon enter the roughly $ 3 trillion and growing market. But nothing prevents Adams from converting his salary himself. Coinbase, the massive crypto exchange, plans to roll out a program next month that will allow its customers to divert funds from their payroll directly to the exchange, said Prakash Hariramani, the company’s senior director of products, in an interview.

When informed of Adams’ bragging, the next mayor’s team backed off the tweet a bit. “He’ll take his dollar paycheck and then convert it to bitcoin via an exchange,” spokesman Evan Thies said. It was unclear whether Adams already owned bitcoin – for what it’s worth, it is not mentioned in his 2020 public disclosures – or if he wants to make it more widely available to city employees. But if he wants to outdo Suarez in his friendly competition, he may have to do more than just open a trading account for himself.

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