Eduardo Paes announces launch of Rio de Janeiro cryptocurrency and IPTU discount for payments made in Bitcoin

 Statements by the mayor of Rio de Janeiro were made during the Rio Innovation Week conference in a panel with the participation of the mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, who is transforming the city of Florida into one of the main hubs of the US cryptocurrency industry.

The mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes (PSD-RJ), announced that he intends to invest a percentage of the treasury of the Rio de Janeiro capital in cryptocurrencies and that the Rio de Janeiro capital will soon have its own digital asset:

"We will launch CriptoRio and invest 1% of the Treasury in cryptocurrency."

The revelation that a decree would be published this Friday establishing the creation of a working group to address these initiatives came during a panel shared with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez at Rio Innovation Week on Thursday.

Paes and Suarez addressed the challenges of transforming metropolises into innovation hubs, encouraging the generation of new businesses. Since taking office, Suarez has adopted a series of initiatives to transform the city of Florida into a global reference in the adoption of cryptoassets by the public administration.

In August, Miami became the first North American city to have its own cryptocurrency, MiamiCoin (MIA). Although neither the mayor nor the decree published in the Official Gazette revealed details about "Crypto Rio", it is likely that the project will be developed and implemented along the same lines as MiamiCoin.

As Cointelegraph Brasil recently reported, Rio de Janeiro is on the radar of City Coins, a company with which the city of Miami signed a partnership to create MiamiCoin.

Last week, Stacks, the protocol on which MiamiCoin and future cryptocurrencies of its kind are based, announced a three-month acceleration program for developers to engage them in new CityCoin projects in other parts of the world - and Rio de Janeiro is highlighted in the initiative's publicity map.

Work group

The Working Group, coordinated by the Municipal Department of Finance and Planning in partnership with the Department of Economic Development, Innovation and Simplification, will have the mission of developing a plan for Rio de Janeiro to become a national cryptocurrency hub.

In addition to the "Crypto Rio" project, the group will study ways to encourage the adoption of crypto-assets by offering discounts to taxpayers in the payment of municipal taxes such as the IPTU, for example, as stated by Treasury Secretary Pedro to the report of O Globo newspaper:

We are studying the possibility of paying taxes with an additional discount if you pay with bitcoins. You take the discount of the single quota of 7% (from the IPTU), it becomes 10% if you pay in Bitcoin. Let's study the legal framework to do that."

The event held at the Brazilian Jockey Club reveals the willingness of Eduardo Paes' administration to resume public policies to transform the city into a hub of innovation and technology that were left aside during the management of Marcelo Crivella (Republicans).

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The mayor also mentioned the resumption of the Porto Maravilha project with the creation of an area focused on the development of the sector that was being called "Porto Maravalley", in a reference to Silicon Valley, in the USA.

Francis Suarez shared his experience stating that tax incentives are an important instrument for attracting companies in the sector:

"We created a tsunami of opportunity. Many US cities were raising taxes, and we lowered them. We understood that we could be at the forefront of innovation, and we invited creators here."