Eric Adams, the Mayor-elect of New York City, has spoken. CityCoins are coming to the Big Apple — let’s do this NYC!

Why NYC?

New York City’s status as a global leader in matters of culture and business doesn’t need to be stated — where NYC goes, the world follows. Even in the midst of a challenging year, the city’s tech scene has thrived:

• Google has added 1.7 million square feet of office space in Manhattan, Facebook another 2.2 million in Midtown
• Apple plans to expand into a second building in Penn Plaza
• Amazon signed a lease on 335,000 sq ft of offices in Manhattan and a production facility in Brooklyn
• TikTok is moving into 232,000 sq ft in Times Square
  

Those are just the major players. In 2008, NYC brought in under $1B in VC funding. By 2019 it drew in over $15B. In 2021’s first quarter alone, NYC-based companies broke records by collecting over $7.5B in late-stage venture funding.

Since 2014 employment in NYC’s tech sector has grown by 28%. Tech bootcamps in that time have tripled from 7 to 22. As Brooklyn’s borough president, Adams says he saw a 356% increase in tech startups over the decade. As Mayor Elect, Adams vowed to “look at what’s preventing the growth of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in our city...This is the Empire State, and we’re going to build empires.”

CityCoins are coming to NYC

MiamiCoin generated approximately $20 million for the city of Miami in less than three months.

Meanwhile, CityCoins is just getting started in NYC—but unlike the city’s existing tech companies, NYCCoin will be a decentralized project directly operated and led by New York City’s community and supporters. This means that NYCCoin is, at its heart, a grassroots initiative, and NYC tokens can be used as the community sees fit to redefine civic engagement, fund local developments, and benefit city residents in whatever additional ways the community wishes.

This is because CityCoins are programmable and built on open-source software, thereby powering a new, community-led ecosystem for developers to create applications and experiment with innovative use cases.

CityCoins is designed not just to incentivize city governments to help support local businesses and residents, but also provide them the means to do so. 30% of the funds spent to mine new NYC tokens are sent to a secure crypto wallet that’s reserved for New York’s municipal government or the Mayor’s Fund. The remaining 70% of these funds are distributed to NYCCoin users that Stack NYC to earn crypto rewards.

All that needs to happen next is NYC accept their protocol donation.

You can learn more about CityCoins mining here.

Crypto regulations in New York

As the U.S.'s current finance capital, New York State has some of the country's most stringent cryptocurrency regulations. The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) codified crypto regulation called the “BitLicense” in 2015.

To this day crypto businesses have found these requirements onerous and difficult to comply with. The “Great Bitcoin Exodus" resulted in countless companies deciding to stop serving customers in New York.

Since then, the number of BitLicenses obtained by companies in New York has increased slowly. Today, a small handful of companies operate under New York crypto regulations.

Cryptocurrency and regulation are often portrayed at odds with one another, but this may be about to change, as Mayor-Elect Eric Adams told Bloomberg: “We need to look at what's preventing the growth of Bitcoins and cryptocurrency in our city.”

Here's why we're excited about cryptocurrency's future in New York, and CityCoins role in shaping that future.

• New York City's Mayor-Elect Eric Adams is bullish on crypto, and he wants New York City to have a CityCoin.
• The potential for crypto in city governance is catching on. Industry leaders like Coinbase's CEO and the founder of Ethereum are as excited about the possibilities as the mayor's of Miami and New York City.
• In their 2019 annual report, the NYDFS stated that they plan to tackle guidance for approved companies to self-certify new cryptocurrencies and allow listing without centralized approval from the NYDFS.

CityCoins ♥ NYC

The city has changed dramatically in recent years, and many of these changes have catalyzed further growth and investment in the city. However, not everyone within the community has been able to share their thoughts on how New York City evolves over time.

Every city’s development trajectory should be informed by positive feedback loops between city officials and residents, and it’s crucial to give everyone the means to directly make a difference. New York has long been a hotbed for technology and innovation, but the city’s vision has always been something more than becoming the next Silicon Valley.

If New York City is anything like Miami, we should see tremendous energy, creativity, and entrepreneurialism enter into the ecosystem. We can’t wait to see what New York City and its supporters do with NYCCoin.

NYCCoin mining activation is possible on November 10th at 11am EST.

In the meantime, we recommend reading CityCoins mining registration and activation documentation to understand how mining works, and know what you need to do to prepare for mining activation.