Austin, the state capital of Texas, is an inland city bordering the Hill Country region looking toward crypto.
As crypto grows in popularity, the mayor of Texas’s fourth-largest city, Steve Adler, has directed city management to consider initiatives to bring Web3 into the city’s ecosystem.
Steve Adler has proposed two new initiatives to bring blockchain and cryptocurrencies into urban infrastructure and business processes. The first initiative aims to promote blockchain in Austin and bring the technology into the city’s ecosystem.
To that end, the mayor directed the administration to explore how Austin can use Web3 and blockchain in twenty areas ranging from smart contracts, supply chain management, and insurance to art, media, fundraising, and identity verification.
“The City Manager is tasked with providing support to the city administration in creating an environment within the city and in the community as a whole that supports the creation and development of new technologies, including blockchain and other technologies, protocols, and applications related to Web3,” the document says.
The second initiative involves directing the city manager to conduct a “study” to find out how Austin can adopt a cryptocurrency. Adler likely wants to offer citizens to pay their bills with cryptocurrencies with these efforts.
As part of this initiative, the city manager must find ways to legalize “the acceptance of bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies as payment of municipal taxes, fees, and fines.”
The success of these two initiatives will depend on the impact of new applications on the daily lives of Austin residents. The city council will consider the proposals on March 24.
In the US, a growing number of cities are using new technologies to improve the population’s lives. In February, Philadelphia authorities announced that they were considering partnering with CityCoins to develop their own “city coin.”
Last year, the city of Miami announced that they planned to launch a program to pay “dividends” to residents of the city in BTC. To do this, citizens must participate in the staking of the city’s cryptocurrency MiamiCoin.
In July, Jackson, Tennessee, announced that it was testing the possibility of integrating bitcoin into government systems. The mayor of the city sees bitcoin to pay taxes and pay salaries to civil servants.
New York City also revealed Its Own City Coin (NYCCoin).