MiamiCoin (MIA) and NewYorkCityCoin (NYC) have dropped 90% and 80% respectively since their all-time highs despite the mayors of both cities officially endorsing them.
MaimiCoin’s price has plunged 92 percent from its all-time high of $0.055 on Sept. 20 to $0.004 at the time of writing, according to CoinGecko data. While the value of NYC has dropped by 80% from its March 3 high of $0.006 to $0.0014.
Investors have been burned by many other crypto assets recently, and demand for MIA and NYC currencies has nearly dried up.
The pair’s trading volume in the last 24 hours was just $70,190 and $45,663, respectively. When MIA and NYC were at ATH levels, they respectively generated $1.6 million and $260,000 in 24 volumes.
Miami mayor Frances Suarez has spoken about MIA’s possible applications on several occasions, most notably announcing in February that the city has spent $5.25 million from its reserve pocket to support a rental aid program.
In November, New York City mayor Eric Adams welcomed the city with open arms, saying, “We’re happy to welcome you to the global home of Web3!” We rely on technology and innovation to propel our city forward.”
The assets were created by the CityCoins project, a Stacks layer-on blockchain-based protocol aimed at providing crypto fundraising routes for local governments like Miami and New York City, which are now its only partners.
Despite any potential legislative ambiguities, CityCoins‘ smart contracts automatically distribute 30% of all mining rewards to a custodied reserve wallet for the associated city, with miners receiving the remaining 70%.
MiamiCoin and New York City Coin may face less mining
According to CityCoins Community Lead Andre Serrano, the value of reserve wallets in Miami and New York City was roughly $24.7 million and $30.8 million in January of this year, indicating that there was a reasonably high community desire to mine the asset at the time.
However, while the partnerships have benefited governments, it appears that the portion of mining rewards, as well as a rumored 9% annual BTC income from “stacking” (basically staking) assets on the Stacks (STX) blockchain, is not compelling enough to drive considerable demand.
If additional utility isn’t added to catch investor appetite, Michael Bloomberg, an urban technology expert at Cornell Tech, recently suggested to Quartz that the currencies may become useless to cities:
“People will stop mining the coin if they can’t make money off of it, and the only way they make money off of it is convincing greater fools to participate.”
