Miami Mayor Francis Suarez on using cryptocurrency to expand the city's economy and its potential impact on residents.
Bitcoin crossed the $40,000 plateu late Tuesday night, before a slight pullback.
Early Wednesday morning Bitcoin was up more than 6%.
The price was around $39,7500 per coin, while rivals Ethereum and Dogecoin were trading around $2,300 and 20 cents per coin, respectively, according to Coindesk.
Bitcoin’s mining difficulty may be set to increase for the first time since China’s crackdown on crypto mining in May, according to Coindesk.
MAYOR SUAREZ ON MIAMICOIN LAUNCH, SAYS CITY IS FOCUSED ON ‘DIFFERENTIATING OUR ECONOMY’
Being blamed are the rapid expansion of mining facilities in North America and the return of Chinese miners through overseas hosting sites.
Mining difficulty is a metric to describe how hard it is to mine a block and get rewards in bitcoin.
An increase in mining difficulty requires a miner to use more computing power to earn bitcoin, which reduces the miner’s profit margin.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez discussed MiamiCoin, the city’s newest cryptocurrency initiative, during an appearance on "Varney & Co." on Tuesday. The mayor says the city is focused on ‘differentiating its economy’ by ‘creating the new wave of technological products.’
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Suarez calls Miami the bitcoin capital of the world.
"The City of Miami could end up earning millions of dollars as a result of the popularity of MiamiCoin," Suarez said. "We're focusing on differentiating our economy by creating the new wave of technological products that will incentivize people to move to Miami and be part of our tech ecosystem".
Whenever a MiamiCoin is mined, a percentage of the coin by virtue of the programing goes to the City of Miami.
Miami hosted the 2021 Bitcoin conference last month.