I will take my first three paychecks in Bitcoin, says New York Mayor Eric Adams
Newly-elected New York City Mayor Eric Adams has made the decision to receive his first three paychecks in Bitcoin.
Adams is going a step further than Miami Mayor Francisco Suarez, who also revealed on Tuesday that he would take his next paycheck in Bitcoin.
Mayor Adams made the announcement via Twitter a few hours after Mayor Suarez made known his own intentions.
In New York we always go big, so I’m going to take my first THREE paychecks in Bitcoin when I become mayor. NYC is going to be the center of the cryptocurrency industry and other fast-growing, innovative industries! Just wait!
— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) November 4, 2021
The decision by both mayors was made in response to a call from podcaster and investor at Morgan Creek Capital Management, Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano, who urged politicians across the US to take their paychecks in Bitcoin.
Suarez has been very supportive of Bitcoin. He began to disclose his plans to pay city workers in the flagship cryptocurrency in February. He is also looking to allow city residents to pay bills and taxes in Bitcoin if the city council approves his proposals.
Furthermore, Miami hosted the Bitcoin 2021 event and is the first city in the US to have its own cryptocurrency dubbed CityCoin.
At his end, Mayor Adams vowed to make New York more welcoming to businesses, especially startups.
Speaking in an interview with Bloomberg, Adams said:
We’re too bureaucratic, too expensive, and too difficult to do business […] our agencies — they go into businesses and are looking for ways to penalize or fine them. We’re changing that atmosphere altogether.
However, Adams has come up against some stiff opposition in his quest to make New York City more crypto-friendly as the state of New York is taken a tough stance to regulate the crypto industry.
In a recent development, New York Attorney General Letitia James ordered for crypto lending protocols in the state to be suspended, sending requests for information to Nexo and Celsius. The state’s BitLicense framework, which was once recognized as the first comprehensive money transmitter license for crypto companies, is now been considered outdated, restrictive, and incompatible with the current DeFi era.
Prior to Adams’s mayoral election victory, he functioned as the borough president of Brooklyn, leading to a 356% increase in the number of tech startups within the area over the last decade.
