Miami Announces Partnership to Launch NFTs on the Ethereum Blockchain

Miami, one of the crypto-friendly cities in the United States, has made another bold step into the market. The city looks set to engage citizens using collectibles.

With investor sentiment about the crypto market gradually turning positive, the city of Miami has announced a multifaceted partnership that will see it launch non-fungible tokens (NFTs) later this year.

Showcasing Miami’s Creativity

In an official press release, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez confirmed that the government had partnered with the media giant TIME Magazine, the payment processor Mastercard, and the customer relations software Salesforce to launch a limited-edition NFT collection on the Ethereum blockchain.

In the release, Suarez explained that the NFTs would take inspiration from indigenous Miami artists – specifically 56 of them. Each artist will represent the city’s 56-square-mile land area. The city’s foray into the NFT space would display Miami’s uniqueness and diversity. At the same time, the government believes that NFTs could present another opportunity to engage with its citizens on a much broader scale.

Speaking on how the partnership will work, Suarez pointed out that TIME USA will define the NFT strategy and provide execution for the project. On the other hand, Mastercard will offer exclusive benefits to the NFT holders, including access to special events and private cultural tours of the city.

As for Salesforce, its objective would be integrating the city’s NFT minting and sales processes into its new NFT Cloud platform. The company has been working on the NFT Cloud and intends for it to be an all-encompassing NFT suite that would allow users to mint and trade their tokens.

Hopefully, a Better Result Than MiamiCoin

The initiative appears to be the latest pro-crypto move from Mayor Suarez, who continues to exclaim the benefits of investing in cryptocurrency. Suarez made a huge splash in the market last year when he announced the MiamiCoin project.

MiamiCoin is the first city coin in the United States. Suarez and the Miami government touted the asset as a way to generate revenues to fund several projects while also allowing citizens to enjoy the benefits of digital assets in their daily lives.

The asset was built on CityCoins – a Stacks layer-one blockchain-based protocol that looks to provide cities with the resources they need to launch their cryptocurrencies and generate funds. At the North American Bitcoin Conference, CityCoins Community Lead Andre Serrano said that MiamiCoin had raised almost $25 million in additional funds for Miami at the time.

However, the crypto bear market has essentially eroded MiamiCoin of its value. Data from CoinMarketCap shows that the digital asset has been down by 92.2% in the past year, with its trading volumes also lower than $10,000 per day.

The drop in MiamiCoin’s value appears to be driven by the lack of use for the asset. While the asset was heralded at the time it launched, it appears that its benefits are only the shared mining rewards and annual Bitcoin yields from “stacking” their coin – the equivalent of crypto staking but on the stacks blockchain.

With such arbitrary benefits and the market still battling bearish headwinds, it is understandable why the demand for MiamiCoin is low. In May, Cornell Tech urban technology researcher Michael Bloomberg explained to Quartz that the coin could eventually become useless if additional utility isn’t developed to capture investor attention.

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