Don’t be fooled by NYC’s mayor praising Bitcoin — he’s just shilling an ICO
“I love Bitcoin; buy my altcoin!” is an all-too-familiar refrain. This week, incoming New York City mayor Eric Adams repeated it.
Shortly after recognizing the benefits of Bitcoin last week, mayor-elect Eric Adams went on to pitch “NYC Coin,” his city’s response to MiamiCoin.
Adams promised to support the crypto industry in New York City, saying he’d “look at what’s preventing the growth of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in our city.”
He also said he would promote talent for crypto-related jobs “because we can’t have a one-sided city where certain groups and areas are doing well.”
Adams then pledged to take his first three mayoral salaries in Bitcoin.
Disambiguation: a dodgy crypto called New York Coin (NYC) has existed since 2014. It has no ties to NYC Coin nor any New York government. Listed on four obscure exchanges, it rarely trades more than $1,000 daily.
Like MiamiCoin (MIA), Adams’ NYC Coin will be built on a Stacks (STX)-based platform called CityCoins that uses some features of Bitcoin (BTC) with multiple security trade-offs.
For those counting, that is three altcoins, all of which are used in the day-to-day operation of all CityCoins, including MiamiCoin and NYC Coin — so Adams’ pitch is far from just “Bitcoin.”
New York City mayor is borrowing Bitcoin’s credibility
CityCoins are ostensibly customized to benefit specific municipalities like New York City.
But in reality, CityCoins simply apportions an arbitrary percentage of token sale proceeds to the city for marketing purposes and to justify claims of “giving back to the community.”
CityCoins then compounds risks for investors by offering egregious yields such as MiamiCoin’s 430% floating-rate APY, daisy-chaining multiple tokens together into yield-farming protocols, encouraging staking with China-founded centralized custodians like OKCoin, and borrowing credibility from Bitcoin.
Adams said that he wants NYC Coin to have “friendly competition” with MiamiCoin.
In a Bloomberg interview, he said NYC Coin would be one part of an overall plan to improve New York City’s ability to attract and retain crypto businesses.
‘We’re too bureaucratic, too expensive, and too difficult to do business,” Adams admitted.
According to CoinMarketCap, traders can only buy MiamiCoin on OKCoin. OKCoin is gaining lucrative new US sign-ups due to this exclusive listing, but it has not disclosed its financial relationship with MiamiCoin’s promoters.
OKCoin advertises an APY of up to 430% for MiamiCoin holders, but admits that this yield will fluctuate with the price of both STX and MIA. MiamiCoin also refuses to report its max supply and number of tokens outstanding.
Read more: [Forget Shiba Inu and Dogecoin, these 5 ancient dog coins got there first]
Adoption of MiamiCoin by Miami area businesses is negligible. Protos reporters living in the city have never seen MiamiCoin used by any local businesses.
There are, of course, billboard advertisements encouraging residents to buy MiamiCoin on OKCoin.com.
A billboard truck parked at Ocean Drive and 5th Street last night claimed, “$19,608,083 contributed to your city by MiamiCoin.”
So, if NYC Coin will be anything like MiamiCoin, prepare to be disappointed.
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