Miami Mayor Francis Suarez will invest some of his retirement savings in bitcoin, as he started collecting his salary in the major cryptocurrency.
Suarez told RealVision on Friday that he is exploring how he can get something out of his 401(k) bitcoin jackpot and that he plans to start pouring tokens into it next year.
“It’s a non-public option. I think it’s a smart asset to invest in,” he told real Vision’s editor at the monetary research site’s TakeOver event.
The miami city chief, who was recently re-elected mayor, uses an app called Strike to get his salary in bitcoins and in November said that one hundred percent of his next paycheck would be in cryptocurrencies.
Suarez has touched the gong of cryptocurrencies to make Miami a virtual innovation center and competes to be a cryptocurrency center with New York, whose mayor Eric Adams has insisted that his first 3 paychecks be in bitcoins.
The mayor told Real Vision that part of the explanation for why you can get part of your 401k in bitcoins is that you are allowed to earn income outdoors.
“I have a source of income from the personal sector. So, in all honesty, my salary as mayor is not one hundred percent of my source of income. So that’s a component of my source of income that I can make this kind of investment with,” Suarez said.
In October, Suarez told Bloomberg that he plans to pay Miami city workers in bitcoin, as well as allow citizens to pay city fees with him.
“(Regarding) the ability of our citizens to pay fees in bitcoin, we just had an industry day for bitcoin exchanges. And we are in the process of launching an RFP (Request for Proposal) on this,” he said at the RealVision event.
The mayor of Miami also needs the state of Florida to allow Miami to keep bitcoins on its balance sheet, but state and federal legislation allows ownership of cryptocurrencies through a city or district.
Suarez was bullish on bitcoin at Friday’s event, despite its recent drop below $50,000, as it was beaten in other markets over fears about the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. The coin stood at $48,864 on Monday morning, according to CoinGecko’s knowledge.
Bitcoin has risen by around 160% in the last 12 months, and is the number one cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of around $923 billion, up from $349 billion the year before.