Several local governments were interested in popular cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and bitcoin for many years. Some of them have already begun to accept crypto payments for some transactions and some other places are taking the next step towards cryptocurrencies.
Berkeley, California announced recently that it was planning to sell microbands in their municipal market, which was a long foreseen project. The idea was brought on in 2018 by the leaders of the city and they are collaborating with the Blockchain at Berkeley, which is a blockchain accelerator lab in Berkeley.
It was Mayor Jesse Arreguín and one of the Council members Ben Bartlett who gave birth to this idea. They will use blockchain technology that backs cryptocurrencies to supply municipal bonds. Thus municipal micro bonds will be distributed in low denominations like $5 or $10, whereas the minimum bond denominations available today is $5000.
Through micro bonds, Berkeley is expanding community investment accesses that will promote crowdsource extra funding for other public projects, and thus more people will get access to investment facilities.
CityCoins are also offering a different opportunity for the cities to make profits through digital currencies. Users can mine new tokens through their platform and they can then select a city for support. There will be a computer program that will allocate 30% of the cryptocurrency mined to the city selected by the user and the user gets the rest 70%.
Austin made a deal with a startup in December and became the latest in the row after New York City and Miami. Miami has benefited $7 million until now. Citing the reports of CityCoins, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and San Francisco are also taking advantage of their digital currencies.
Hillary Schieve, the Mayor of Reno is behind a plan that will help the residents of the city to get cryptocurrencies of the same value as that of the parcels owned by the city. Thus the people will be able to buy or sell stakes and they will share proceeds during the leasing or selling of land. Schieve is using blockchain to market Reno as one of the most vibrant and youthful places in the world.
All of these initiatives have a common factor – all of them have their roots in grassroots fundraising, although the method used is modern. For example, Berkeley is trying to normalize the municipal market. This was a plan that was in the talk for many years and never achieved in real for years.
Modern technologies like cryptocurrencies and micro bonds offer a great opportunity to the people, especially the residents to buy stakes from their city and to earn revenue from it. Thus cryptocurrency is building a platform to improve different communities.
Final Thoughts
Cryptocurrency is widening its opportunities and possibilities. If the local governments can make use of these opportunities, there can be dramatic changes in the communities including grassroots fundraising. With the advent of more technological features, initiatives that are finding a track to execute their plans through cryptocurrency and blockchains will find ways to revolutionize the financial and economic sector.