Miami-Dade County Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins gave the opening remarks to a sold out crowd.
“This is an entire industry visit," Cohen Higgins said. "These are businesses. These are financial industries and we want them to have a home and I think Miami-Dade County is the perfect home.”
The City of Miami welcomed the conference with open arms, in hopes of becoming the next silicon valley. County leaders created a task force to look into how residents could use cryptocurrency as a form payment for taxes, fees and services.
Skateboarding icon Tony Hawk, gave one of the keynotes on Bitcoin, Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank, who spoke about mining as a public company, and a video broadcast with president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, announced a partnership with digital wallet company, Strike, to build the country’s modern financial infrastructure using bitcoin technology.
The hype is real.
Miami City Hall could begin using Bitcoin.
City commissioners voted to study the use of the cryptocurrency and look for a vendor to help with transactions. If the commission approves, employees would have an option to receive all or part of their salaries in Bitcoin, and the public could have a Bitcoin option to pay for city services.
“It’s wonderful to be a very ‘crypto-forward’ city in the city of Miami, and I want to thank my commission colleagues for allowing that to happen,” Mayor Suarez said.
The city will launch education campaigns in English, Spanish and Creole to inform people about cryptocurrency, and encourage the Legislature to pass laws to allow the city to invest public funds in cryptocurrency.
The price of a single Bitcoin now stands at more than $47,000, after Elon Musk, disclosed it had purchased $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, sending the cryptocurrency’s price soaring.
Photos by Getty IMages