Is it a coincidence that “MiamiCoin” (and NYC Coin by the same group) have not seen any adoption by the actual citizens, tourists and businesses in Miami and NYC? Shouldn’t that be the goal of such coins? Otherwise, they may as well be like this NYCoin from 2014
MiamiCoin is the first coin by CityCoins, in cooperation with the BlockStack team. They amassed quite a bit of value from “stacking” (which is a way to earn the STX in their spin on “mining” which essentially makes miners send BTC to some STX addresses, rather than burn electricity, to enter a lottery to be chosen as the next miner). This process has led hundreds of millions of dollars to be sent into the Stacks ecosystem. The same process of “stacking” STX to earn MiamiCoin has been used to send value into a coin named after the city of Miami, with a promise to give 30% to be used by the city itself.
Speculation vs Utility
So far, all this “staking” and “stacking” was largely about speculation and earning yields. As we speak about all the time here at Intercoin, the Web3 space needs to move past peer to peer applications and passive staking, and towards maximizing utility, by powering real currencies for communities. What really matters for a currency like MiamiCoin is whether there is mass adoption. It matters for whether the currency actually helps people. It matters It even matters for whether its value will hold.
Reaching out to Stacks
We honestly wanted to unlock all the value in MiamiCoin, and build a bridge between Stacks and our ecosystem built on EVM. We tried to work with them. We had several advisors reach out to them, about Intercoin building actual applications for the ecosystem. They always insisted they’re so decentralized that there’s no one really to talk to. This may be why:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001693656/000119312521012574/d111554d1u.htm
But many people, including Fred Wilson at USV, have criticized Stacks over the years for their execution. They tried releasing the Blockstack Browser, but that didn’t get much adoption. Then they launched CityCoins. We applied to USV but got rejected largely because they don’t invest in competing companies, and Stacks was already doing a version of what we’re doing. I heard Fred Wilson on one of his videos expressing a bit of frustration with the Stacks team about their execution, which I found to be extremely rare with a VC about their portfolio company. Others seemed to echo this, and got a response from the founder:
Earlier this year, we applied to the Stacks accelerator in an effort to at least build a crosschain bridge from Stacks to EVM everywhere. We spoke to several of the judges in the ecosystem, who liked what we were building, but they ultimately rejected us in favor of these projects.
City Coins
We really don’t want city coins to get a bad name, as they can really help with adoption of UBI and smart economies. But sadly, to this day, we haven’t been funded to the extent Blockstack has, nor have we raised millions or billions via an ICO that blatantly violates SEC regulations. We are building a software business for real customers, and real adoption by mayors of small cities and townships, among other communities. Slowly and steadily, we hope to make Web4 a reality: moving away from speculation and gimmicks, to mass adoption and utility,.
