Miami vies for the title of ‘Bitcoin City’

Dive Temporary:

• Miami is eyeing the title of ‘Bitcoin Metropolis’ because it begins to research how Bitcoin can be utilized as a type of forex to pay municipal worker salaries, or as an choice for the general public to pay metropolis providers and charges. 
• Metropolis commissioners voted 4-1 on Thursday night to check the cryptocurrency earlier than permitting the town to rent a vendor to course of transactions, the Miami Herald reports. In a video message shared by Mayor Francis Suarez late final week, he thanked his colleagues for permitting the town to be “crypto-forward.”

• Inside hours of this vote, Suarez additionally introduced the launch of a Venture Miami department; appointed Saif Ishoof as the town’s senior advisor for innovation and expertise; and appointed Melissa Krinzman as the town’s first Venture Capitalist-in-Residence — all in an effort to steer Miami as America’s most tech-forward authorities.

Dive Perception:

It has been practically one month since Mayor Suarez and Twitter unhealthy boy and enterprise magnate Elon Musk chatted openly on social media in regards to the potential for Musk’s Boring Firm to construct a traffic-solving tunnel system beneath the town. 

Whatever the plan’s potential — specialists had been quick to say it is unviable — the dialog put a highlight on Suarez, a 43-year-old Republican chief dealing with reelection this yr for his second time period as mayor.

Suarez has sat on Florida’s Blockchain Process Drive since his appointment by Florida Chief Monetary Officer Jimmy Patronis in 2019. Now, Suarez is poising himself as an progressive chief set to make Miami a metropolis of crypto and VC, significantly because the pandemic-driven city exodus pushes tech staff into new markets nationally. 

Decentralizing monetary exchanges can convey a number of advantages to a metropolis in regard to entry and fairness, nevertheless it additionally serves one other function: drawing tech entrepreneurs. Musk is only one such entrepreneur who just lately sparked buzz round Bitcoin when his firm Tesla bought $1.5 billion of the crypto for “extra flexibility to additional diversify and maximize returns on our money,” the corporate mentioned in an SEC filing.

Suarez mentioned it is only a matter of time earlier than different firms observe go well with.

“I firmly imagine that when and if Amazon and or Apple adopts bitcoin as a cost construction the dam will primarily break as a result of at that time you’re speaking a few very excessive quantity of transactions with the ability to use bitcon,” Suarez told Reuters final week. “I simply needed us to be on the innovative and form of forward of the sport.”

Unlocking Bitcoin instead can assist enhance the already-abundant funding flowing into Miami’s startups. At the very least 70 venture-backed firms in Miami acquired funding in 2020, in response to information obtained from Crunchbase Professional, with personal fairness, seed, enterprise and company funding elevating greater than $1 billion throughout 49 offers. (This determine doesn’t embody the greater than $1.4 billion in mixed funding from post-IPO debt rounds held by each Norwegian Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean.) 

This quantity is a skyrocket from 2019, when Miami-based firms introduced in simply $327 million in funding throughout 77 offers, according to Crunchbase News. Moreover, Miami noticed the addition of no less than 34 new venture-backed firms based in 2020.

Promoting tech startups on Miami isn’t significantly laborious because of its climate and site in a tax-friendly state, specialists say. But that promote grew to become even simpler in January when the town launched eStart, a mobile-friendly net app permitting customers to use for enterprise licenses on-line to simplify the startup course of.

Moreover, Miami struck gold when SoftBank announced plans in late January to take a position $100 million in startups positioned in or relocating to Miami. Founders Fund, recognized to some as one of many world’s most outstanding enterprise funds with $6 billion in capital, additionally signed a one-year lease for a Miami workplace earlier this month. VC-in-Residence Krinzman, whose bio particulars a 25-year historical past of launching and investing in early-stage firms, will spend the subsequent yr supporting the efforts of those funds to convey continued innovation to Miami.